JRW Conference 2010
Speaker and Moderator Bios

Gigi Amateau is the author of the young adult novel, A Certain Strain of Peculiar (Candlewick Press, 2009), and the middle-grade novel, Chancey of the Maury River (Candlewick Press, 2008). Her debut young adult novel, Claiming Georgia Tate (Candlewick Press, 2005), was selected as a Book Sense Children's Pick, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and a VOYA Review Editor's Choice. She also contributed to the acclaimed anthology, Our White House: Looking In Looking Out (Candlewick Press, 2008). Gigi is a native of Mississippi. She grew up in Mechanicsville, VA and graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in Urban Studies and Planning. She lives in the city of Richmond, VA with her husband and daughter.

Bill Blume is a fantasy writer whose short stories have been published in Spinetingler Magazine. He is the creator of the online comic strip "The Wildcat's Lair." He was also chair of the organizing committee for the 2007 James River Writers Conference and is a member of the "Ten Page Club." Bill earned a BA in Journalism from University of South Carolina and worked as a news producer for WTVR-TV in Richmond until 2001.

Laura Browder’s fourth and most recent book is When Janey Comes Marching Home:  Portraits of Women Combat Veterans, a collaboration with photographer Sascha Pflaeging, for which she interviewed 52 women from all branches of the military. The Janey exhibit is on a national tour through fall 2011.  Browder is the Tyler and Alice Haynes Professor of American Studies at the University of Richmond and has a forthcoming documentary on PBS titled "Gone to Texas:  The Lives of Forrest Carter."

Michelle Brower began her career in publishing in 2004 while studying for her Master’s degree in English Literature at New York University, and has been hooked ever since.  During that time, she assisted agents Wendy Sherman and Joelle Delbourgo, and found herself in love with the process of discovering new writers and helping existing writers further their careers.  After graduating, she joined Wendy Sherman Associates and began representing both fiction and non-fiction. In 2009, she joined Folio Literary Management, where she is now looking for literary fiction, thrillers, high-quality commercial fiction that transcends genre, and narrative non-fiction. She enjoys digging into a manuscript and working with authors to make their project as saleable as it can be.  Her list includes the authors S.G. Browne, Julia Wertz, Todd Ritter, and JRW member Michele Young-Stone.

Ellen F. Brown is a freelance writer whose work is regularly featured in Fine Books & Collections magazine. She also has written for Georgia Backroads, Modernism, and Sweetbay Review. She is a member of Virginia Press Women and the Authors Guild and also serves on the board of both the Library of Virginia Foundation and Friends of the Richmond Public Library. Her first book, a publishing history of Gone With the Wind, will be released by Taylor Trade in 2011. She is a former Assistant Attorney General and was a Senior Counsel at Dominion Resources.

Lucy Carson worked in the editorial department of Bloomsbury UK and later in the production department of The Weinstein Company in Los Angeles before she joined The Friedrich Agency in early 2008, where she is now an associate agent. During her two years at The Friedrich Agency, Lucy has worked with such authors as Sue Grafton, Frank McCourt, Lisa Scottoline, Joseph Finder, Terry McMillan, and Jane Smiley. She is actively building a list of adult fiction and non-fiction for the trade audience.

Shawna Christos has written manuals, booklets, and papers for a variety of companies, including a local Fortune 500 company, and earned inter-company recognition and awards for graphics, art, computer, and database work.

Susann Cokal is the author of two critically praised novels, Mirabilis and Breath and Bones, and of short stories that have appeared in numerous journals. She holds two PhD's: one from Berkeley in comparative literature, and one from Binghamton University in creative writing, and she has published critical work on writers such as Jeanette Winterson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Georges Bataille. She also reviews fiction for The New York Times Book Review. She moved to Richmond in 2004 to teach creative writing and contemporary literature at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Temple Cone is an associate professor of English at the United States Naval Academy.  He has published two books of poetry: The Broken Meadow (Old Seventy Creek Press, summer 2010) and No Loneliness (FutureCycle Press, 2009), which received the FutureCycle Poetry Book Award.  He has also published five poetry chapbooks, two critical reference works on Walt Whitman and on 20th-century American poetry, and poems in a number of journals, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Southern Poetry Review.  Awards for his work include two Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prizes, the Christian Publishers Poetry Prize, a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Poetry, and the John Lehman Award in Poetry from the Wisconsin Academy Review.  A native Richmonder, he lives in Annapolis, Maryland with his wife and daughter.

A graduate of the University of Virginia and a native of southwest Virginia, Chelyen Davis is a journalist and aspiring fiction writer. She is a reporter for the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, where she covers politics and state government. She also has worked for the Lynchburg News and Advance and the Bluefield (W.Va.) Daily Telegraph. Chelyen's short fiction has been published in Berea College's "Appalachian Heritage" magazine. At present, she lives in Richmond and plays kickball and the fiddle, both poorly.

Shelly Dean is the middle school librarian at St. Catherine’s School in Richmond, Virginia. She was born in Washington D.C. and educated at the University of Virginia, where her three siblings also attended. The love of books runs in the family. Her brother, Eddie Dean, wrote Man of Constant Sorrow: My Life and Times, with Ralph Stanley, nominated in the non-fiction category for the Thirteenth Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards. A mother of two, Shelly has been known to waste entire summer days reading YA books instead of attending to household duties.

Joni Davis is a native of Richmond Virginia and a partner with the law firm of Schroder, Fidlow, Titley & Davis, PLC.  Her diverse clients include visual artists, authors, musicians, actors, actresses, models and fashion designers.  In 2006, she developed the Coffee with an Art Lawyer Program, a pro-bono program offering artists of every genre a free consultation over coffee with an attorney competent in the area of arts and entertainment.  Joni’s first novel co-authored with Lisa Hyatt, Feng Shui Love was released in 2009.

Diann Ducharme was born in Indiana in 1971, and spent the majority of her childhood in Newport News, Virginia. She majored in English literature at the University of Virginia, but never wrote creatively until, after the birth of her second child in 2003, she sat down to write The Outer Banks House. Diann has vacationed on the Outer Banks since she was three, and married her husband in Duck, North Carolina, immediately after stubborn Hurricane Bonnie churned through the Outer Banks.  The family beach house in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, provided shelter while she conducted research for her historical novel.  She has two beach-loving children, Dorsey and Katherine, as well as a border collie named Toby, who enjoys his sprints along the Outer Banks shore. The family lives in rural bliss in Manakin-Sabot, Virginia.

A former political and editorial writer for The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Margaret Edds is the author of four books. Her most recent, Finding Sara: A Daughter’s Journey (Butler Books), was preceded by An Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington Jr.  (NYU Press).  She graduated from Tennessee Wesleyan College and holds a Masters of Liberal Arts degree from the University of Richmond. She and her husband live in Richmond, VA. They have three adult children.

Kirk Ellis served as writer and co-executive producer for the seven-part HBO miniseries, John Adams, based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography and starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. The series picked up 23 Emmy nominations (the second most-nominated miniseries in TV history after Roots) including two for Ellis as writer and co-executive producer. He also received an Emmy nomination and won the Writers Guild of America and Humanitas Awards for the ABC miniseries Anne Frank. He received the Western Writers of America's Golden Spur Award for Best Drama Script for Hell on Wheels. Following John Adams, Ellis will continue his association with David McCullough and the American Revolution as writer and co-executive producer of 1776, based on McCullough's book.  His newest project is Black Gold: The Teapot Dome Scandal, a four-hour miniseries for AMC based on Laton McCartney's book.

With an investigative journalism background, Robin Farmer has more than 20 years of award-winning expertise in news, education, feature and narrative reporting and writing. She has dipped her toes in teaching, serving as an adjunct professor and lecturer at Virginia Commonwealth University and as a writing instructor for area teens interested in journalism.  She also has public relations experience in public health and politics.  An aspiring screenwriter, she’s open for the next inciting incident that will spin her life in a new direction.

Mary Flinn is the Senior Editor at Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, published as a joint venture of the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and New Virginia Review. Since 1985, she has been the Director of New Virginia Review, Inc., and is the editor, with George Garrett, of Elvis in Oz, New Writing from the Hollins College Creative Writing Program (1992). She also facilitated the editing of The Gazer Within by Larry Levis (2001), and she has served as the Poetry and Fiction editor of 64 Magazine and as editor of New Virginia Review. She has participated on editors' panels, as a literature fellowship judge for numerous art councils, and as a review panelist for the National Endowment and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She was the first recipient of the Theresa Pollack Award for Words presented by Richmond Magazine.

Clifford Garstang is the author of the short story collection In an Uncharted Country. He received an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. His work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Cream City Review, and elsewhere and has received Distinguished Mention in the Best American Series. He won the 2006 Confluence Fiction Prize and the 2007 GSU Review Fiction Prize and is a Fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. 

Lee Gimpel (JRW Vice-Chair, 2010) covers business, technology and the intersection thereof for such publications as Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Inc., Worth and BusinessWeek SmallBiz. In addition, he writes a regular biz-and-tech column for the in-flight magazine Go. His articles about culture, lifestyle, travel and history have appeared in such publications as Budget Travel, Executive Traveler, Best Life, Las Vegas, Men's Journal and The Washington Post. His first book, Fighting Wars, Planning for Peace, recounts the life of Gen. George C. Marshall and the Marshall Plan. He is currently working on a book about his travels through emergent India. He previously served as treasurer of James River Writers.

Reginald Gordon, a Richmond native, is the CEO of the American Red Cross, Greater Richmond Chapter. Previously, he served as Executive Director of William Byrd Community House and founding Executive Director of Homeward: Richmond’s Regional Response to Homelessness. He received a degree in Public Policy from Duke University and a law degree from Howard School of Law. He has served as Chair of Leadership Metro Richmond and also served on the boards of the Richmond Behavioral Health Authority, James River Writers, and Virginia Blood Services. Reggie is also a screenwriter and playwright.

Valley Haggard, the director of Richmond Young Writers and Style Weekly's Book Editor, writes a monthly "Alternatives" column for Belle, freelances for Richmond Home Magazine and teaches creative writing for ART 180. She has a five-year old son, a husband, a dog and a cat. She is hard at work on her first book.

Phaedra Hise is a founding co-chair of the James River Writers. As a journalist, her work has been anthologized and has appeared in national publications including Glamour, Salon, Forbes ASAP, Popular Mechanics, Ladies' Home Journal, Prevention and Smithsonian Air & Space. She is a former Staff Writer for Inc., and currently a Contributor to Fortune Small Business. She has written four books, most recently Pilot Error: Anatomy of a Plane Crash, called "a compelling page-turner" by the Boston Globe. She has given radio commentary and interviews, appeared on national television, and speaks regularly at conferences and universities.

Silas House is the author of four novels, Clay’s Quilt (2001), A Parchment of Leaves (2003), The Coal Tattoo (2004), and Eli the Good (2009), as well as two plays, and a creative nonfiction book co-authored with Jason Howard. He is Writer-in-Residence at Lincoln Memorial University and serves on the fiction faculty of Spalding University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. House is a two-time finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Prize, a two-time winner of the Kentucky Novel of the Year, the Appalachian Writer of the Year, the Appalachian Book of the Year, the Chaffin Prize for Literature, the Award for Special Achievement from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and many other honors. For his environmental activism House received the Helen Lewis Community Lewis Award in 2008 from the Appalachian Studies Association. His work can be found in Newsday, Oxford American, Bayou, The Southeast Review, The Louisville Review, The Beloit Fiction Journal, Wind, Night Train, New Stories From the South 2004: The Year’s Best, and others. He is currently working on his fifth novel, Evona Darling.

Jason Howard is the coauthor of Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal and the editor of We All Live Downstream: Writings About Mountaintop Removal. He is a former senior editor and staff writer for Equal Justice Magazine. His works have appeared in such publications as Paste, The Louisville Review, Appalachian Heritage, New Southerner and Kentucky Living. He currently lives in Berea, Kentucky, widely known as “the place to be for the apocalypse.”

Doug Jones writes plays for children and adults, 40 of which have been produced in venues around the country. Jones holds degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Virginia. He has taught at the University of Virginia, TheatreVirginia, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the UVA Center for Continuing Education, and the Virginia Opera, as well as in private schools in the Richmond area. Jones has also published short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, as well as scripts for radio and video. He is a member of The Dramatists Guild and The Authors League of America. His interests in JRW’s work include: The Writing Show, the JRW Conference, and JRW contests.

A Richmond native, Dean King, is the award-winning author of, most recently, Unbound: A True Story of War, Love, and Survival (Little, Brown, 2010) and eight other works of non-fiction, including the Daily Telegraph book of the year Patrick O'Brian: A Life and the national bestseller Skeletons on the Zahara. For Unbound, which follows the struggles of the women marchers on the year-long, 4,000-mile Long March in China, in 1934, Dean interviewed the last surviving female marcher and trekked through the Tibetan Snowy Mountains of Northwest Sichuan province (see also "In the Land of the Human-Sucking Bogs" in Outside magazine, April 2010). The subject of a two-hour History Channel documentary filmed in Essaouira, Morocco, Skeletons is currently being developed as a feature film by Independent Film (London). Dean's writing has also appeared in Esquire, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure, the New York Times, and in the recent anthology Richmond Noir.

Harry Kollatz Jr., a native Richmonder, senior writer for Richmond magazine, is author of True Richmond Stories and Richmond In Ragtime: Socialists, Suffragists, Sex and Murder. His "Flashback" history column began in 1993 and in 1998 he co-initiated the publication's Theresa Pollak Prizes for Excellence in the Arts, a recognition of the region's makers and creators. As a feature writer for Richmond, he's assayed subjects including the psychological affects of interior paint colors, sex, lost and founds, tuberculosis and Tom Robbins. He is co-founder, past president and current board member of the Firehouse Theatre Project, and served on the Podium Foundation. In 1998, in the ABC miniseries Tom Clancy's Netforce he portrayed a redneck fugitive terrorist. His character appeared in both installments, but proved so annoying that his fellow miscreants killed him. Harry, however, lives with his partner-in-art Amie Oliver and their cats in the city's fashionably scruffy WoBSoC district.

Jon Kukla aims to present first-rate historical scholarship to a general readership. His recent books, Mr. Jefferson's Women (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007) and A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), were selections of the History Book Club and the Book of the Month Club. Born in Wisconsin, Kukla was graduated from Carthage College and took his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He lives and writes in Richmond, where he is working on a fresh narrative of the American Revolution under contract with Simon and Schuster.

Four-time regional Emmy winner May-Lily Lee is the Host and Senior Producer of Virginia Currents, Virginia’s longest-running statewide television series currently on air. An esteemed broadcaster in Virginia for a quarter of a century, May-Lily’s observations and interviews celebrate the diverse fabric of the Commonwealth. From lawmakers to craftsmen to humanitarians, her shows have introduced Virginians to people, places and each other. For six years May-Lily hosted the academic quiz-bowl Battle of the Brains and the educational series Behind the Lines. She was the host and reporter for the Community Idea Stations’ legislative bureau and has been a panelist for or reported on every gubernatorial election and inaugural since the inauguration of Governor Doug Wilder. May-Lily’s passion for the stories of Virginia earned her the distinction in 2007 of “Broadcaster of the Year” by the Richmond Broadcasters Hall of Fame. And in June of this year she was inducted into the Silver Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in Washington, D.C. for 25 years of outstanding contributions to the broadcast community.

Jann Malone, whose first memory is holding a book in her hands, has been a writer and editor of magazines and newspapers in Georgia and Virginia for 38 years. Currently, she writes features for AARP, book reviews for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and articles on books and authors for BoomerLife Magazine. Over the course of her 32 years at The Times-Dispatch, she edited the book and food sections and wrote lifestyle columns, garden articles, food features, children’s fiction and countless news stories. She has taught news, feature and magazine writing at the University of Richmond. She helped plan the 2008 JRW Conference and serves on the 2010 Conference Committee. In addition to her work with JRW, her other volunteer activities include judging the Library of Virginia’s nonfiction literary award and writing a trail guide for Menokin, a historic home on the Northern Neck, part of her ongoing work as a Certified Master Naturalist.

Meg Medina has written for adults and children for over fifteen years. Her stories and poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines. MILAGROS: Girl from Away (Henry Holt, 2008) is her first novel for young readers. Her first picture book, TIA ISA WANTS A CAR, is forthcoming from Candlewick Press in 2011. She's currently working on a new young adult and new middle grade novel. She lives in Richmond, VA, with her husband and three children.

Lauren Oliver is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the MFA program at New York University. She is now a full-time writer and lives in Brooklyn, New York, though she spends as much time traveling and couch-surfing as her extremely tolerant friends will allow. Before I Fall, which reached the New York Times Bestseller list in March, is her first novel.

Michael Olmert has written five books, over 200 magazine articles, essays, and reviews, three feature films, an IMAX film, two plays, and more than ninety television documentaries.  He has also won three Primetime Emmy Awards.  He holds a PhD in English literature and is a professor in the English Department of the University of Maryland, where he has taught for 25 years, and where he was recently inducted into their Alumni Hall of Fame.

Meg Daley Olmert has created and produced documentary television series for National Geographic Television, The Discovery Channel, and PBS. In 1992, while developing a series on the evolution of the human-animal bond, she was asked to join a research team studying the neurobiology of social bonding. Her partnership in this endeavor inspired Made For Each Other, The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond. This is the first book to explain the brain chemistry that flows through – and between – all mammals forging powerful social bonds between the species. It traces the evolution of this shared neurobiological heritage as it calmed wild animals and turned our hunter-gather ancestors into full-time animal caregivers. And it also shows how the ability of humans and animals to activate this complex brain system in each other continues to quiet our hearts and minds, filling us with a very real, very essential sense of wellbeing. Meg and her husband Michael have a home on the eastern shore of Maryland which they share with her kayaking cats.

After publishing 20 novels for adults, including Freudian Slip, nominated for best contemporary romance of 2009 by Romantic Times, Erica Orloff took to her Russian ancestry to write the middle grade children’s fantasy series, The Magickeepers, under the pen name Erica Kirov.  A native New Yorker, Orloff attended the University of Richmond and eventually settled here. A mother of four, she balances writing with motherhood, with varying degrees of success and a large amount of chaos.

Joseph Papa is a publicist at HarperCollins Publishers in New York. He works for a number of imprints within the company specializing in pop-culture titles. He has worked on the publicity campaigns for a number of bestselling authors including Gregory Maguire, Nikki Giovanni and Mark Di Vincenzo. Joseph is writing a book on Elizabeth Taylor that is due out from HarperCollins in 2011.

Stephanie Pearson is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Outside magazine, where she worked fulltime as a staff editor for more than a decade. Pearson specializes in profiling exotic people and places. Three of her Outside stories won honorable mentions in the Best American Travel writing series. Her most recent expedition was a five-week stint at Mount Everest base camp last spring, where she worked as the journalist for Team Hanesbrands (www.climbwithus.com). Pearson lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and northern Minnesota.

Kris Spisak Petroski has taught writing at Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Richmond, John Tyler Community College and J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College. In the spring of 2006, Kris was briefly the Writer-in-Residence at St. Catherine’s School, and the sixth grade class of that year read her in-process middle grade novel. Her research has been published in the archives of the Richmond History Center and in the marketing materials of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and her short fiction has been published in Dark Sky Magazine. Presently, Kris is working on a thriller as well as making the final tweaks on her middle grade project.

Joshua Poteat’s books include Ornithologies (Anhinga Poetry Prize, 2006), Illustrating the Machine that Makes the World (University of Georgia Press/VQR, 2009), and a chapbook, Meditations (Poetry Society of America National Chapbook Award, 2004). His work has also appeared in several anthologies, such as Between Water and Song: New Poets for the 21st Century (White Pine Press, 2010) andThe Poets Guide to the Birds (Anhinga Press, 2009). Over the last few years, he has won prizes from American Literary Review, Bellingham Review, Columbia, Hunger Mountain, Marlboro Review, Nebraska Review, River City, Vermont Studio Center, The Millay Colony, Virginia Commission for the Arts, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. From 2003-2006, his work was part of an international traveling exhibition of painting and poetry, Pivot Points. Recently, a light- and text-based installation made in collaboration with Roberto Ventura won Best in Show for InLight 2009. Originally from Hampstead, North Carolina, Joshua lives with the writer Allison Titus and their three pugs in Richmond, Virginia, where he works at The Martin Agency as an editor of assorted texts, and teaches workshops at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Tom Sanchez Prunier has been a fixture on the Richmond poetry scene for nearly five years. He entered the poetry universe through the side door of poetry slam competitions. In 2006, Tom founded the SlamRichmond poetry slam series, now in its fifth year of sending a team of poets to compete in the National Poetry Slam. He was a member of “Team Richmond” in 2007. Tom’s poetry has been published in several periodicals and collections, including the recent edition of Skipping Stones. He has self-published two chapbooks of his poetry, ¡Die Minivan Die!  (2006) and T.S. Lives (2009)

Virginia Pye (JRW Chair, 2010) is a fiction writer and poet. Her stories have been published in numerous literary magazines including The North American Review, failbetter.com, The Baltimore Review, and upcoming in The Potomac Review. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA from Wesleyan University and taught writing and literature at NYU and the University of Pennsylvania. She is completing a new novel, Sleepwalking to China, about three generations of an American family in Asia.

Nathan Richardson is a poet, literary consultant, and author of the collections Likeness of Being, You are the Subject, and the poetry CD Nathan Live at Langley.  He has contributed to numerous poetry anthologies such as Skipping Stones and The Poet's Domain.  In addition to presenting literary workshops, during his 20 year literary career, he has worked collaboratively with many artistic disciplines and organizations, including the Radio Renaissance Project with middle schools in Portsmouth, VA, the Gordon Parks Photography Exhibit, Virginia's Governor's School of the Arts. He has made many appearances on local and national radio and television including n National Public Radio's StoryCorps. 

David L. Robbins was born in Richmond and received his undergraduate and Juris Doctorate degrees from the College of William & Mary. He has taught creative writing at W&M and VCU, and has published nine novels, including his most recent, Broken Jewel, released in November 2009. He is a founding co-chair of James River Writers. At present, David is at work on his tenth, The Devil's Waters, a novel about Somali piracy. He is also the co-founder of The Podium Foundation, working in partnership with Richmond Public Schools to support and advocate the teaching and practice of writing skills in the city's high schools, and to create city-wide platforms of expression for RPS students.

David B. Robinson, CPA is an extremely well-rounded accountant whose greatest strength is that he has actually done and participated in things about which most other CPAs only talk, consult and advise. In 2005, after selling a large 1,300 client firm which he started in 1990 with five clients, he formed a new firm – Custer Robinson, LLC – that specializes in providing tax preparation and business strategy services to individuals engaged in media and the performing arts. He also accepts periodic employment contracts to be Chief Financial Officer of emerging and evolving entities. In fall 2009, he completed his 21-month position as Acting Chief Financial Officer of Richmond CenterStage, where his principal duties involved the final investor negotiations of the Federal and Virginia Historic and New Market tax credit portions of the $73.5 million dollar renovation of the Carpenter Theater and vacant Thalhimer’s Department Store into a new performing arts venue. While at Richmond CenterStage, he was also held responsible for financial statement preparation, external audit management, accounting and information systems design, tax preparation and pledge and cash flow forecasting.

Katharine Sands is a literary agent with the Sarah Jane Freymann Agency and the author of Making the Perfect Pitch: How to Catch a Literary Agent's Eye.  She has worked with authors on a diverse array of books, including Make Up, Don't Break Up with Oprah guest Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil; playwright Robert Patrick's novel, Temple Slave; The Complete Book on International Adoption: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Your Child by Dawn Davenport; Ford model Helen Lee's The Tao of Beauty; and Elvis and You: Your Guide to the Pleasures of Being an Elvis Fan by Laura Levin and John O'Hara, to name a few. Actively building her client list, she likes books that have a clear benefit for readers' lives in categories of food, travel, lifestyle, home arts, beauty, wisdom, relationships, and parenting.  She likes to be transported to a world rarely or newly observed; for fiction, she wants to be compelled and propelled.  When asked what she is looking for, she says, “I know it when I see it…The last thing I would have thought I wanted to represent was a book of poetry for the young adult market; so, guess what I have just sold! Yes, SAT Word Slam by Jodi Fodor, a book of rhymes for a YA audience…I cannot always predict what a writer [will inspire] me to undertake.”

Melissa Sarver joined the Elizabeth Kaplan Agency in 2006, representing authors in both fiction and nonfiction.  In fiction she is interested in adult, YA and middle grade, and is looking for literary and commercial projects.  She likes dark, edgy stories with brilliant prose and strong voice as well as quirky stories with a fresh sense of humor.  She especially enjoys family sagas, multicultural stories and emotional stories with dystopian themes.  In nonfiction, she is looking for voice-driven narrative nonfiction, memoir, lifestyle, business, travel, pop culture, cookbooks and food writing.  A graduate of Boston University, she benefits from the experience of working with several literary agencies: Waxman Literary Agency, Brick House Literary Agents, and Imprint Agency (now FinePrint).   Her recent sales include Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding by Jessie Sholl; The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry; Bmore Sweet: A Collection of Vegan and Gluten Free Desserts by Emily Mainquist; The Naughty List series by Suzanne Young; Traveling Instructions and Songs for a Teenage Nomad by Kim Culbertson; and Generation Earn: The Young Professional’s Guide to Spending, Investing, and Giving Back by Kimberly Palmer.

Sarah R. Shaber is the award-winning author of the Professor Simon Shaw mystery series, published by St. Martin's Press.  Shell Game is the latest in the series.  She also edited Tar Heel Dead, a collection of mystery short stories by North Carolina authors.

Charles J. Shields’ Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee was a New York Times bestseller during the summer of 2006 and is in its 8th printing. Currently, he’s writing the first biography of Kurt Vonnegut, due out from Henry Holt & Co. in 2011. Shields received a B.A. in English and an M.A. in American history from the University of Illinois. He resides in Barboursville, Virginia with his wife, Guadalupe.

Maya Payne Smart is a professional writer who has written hundreds of articles for newspapers, magazines and websites including Black Enterprise, CNNMoney.com and Savoy. She also helps writers master the business side of the craft through coaching and courses offered through her website WritingCoach.com. She received a bachelor's degree in Social Studies from Harvard University and a master's degree in editorial journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She serves on the boards of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and James River Writers and also is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and The Society of Professional Journalists.

Patty Smith teaches creative writing and American literature at the Appomattox Regional Governor's School for the Arts and Technology in Petersburg, VA. Her short fiction appears in such places as So to Speak: a journal of literature and the arts, and The Tusculum Review. Her essays appear in the anthologies One Teacher in Ten: Gay and Lesbian Educators Tell Their Stories (Alyson Publications, 1994), Tied in Knots: Funny Stories from the Wedding Day (Seal Press, 2006) and will be forthcoming in the anthology Women's Wonderlands (University of Wisconsin Press). She holds a BA from Wesleyan University, an MA from Middlebury College, and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She lives in Richmond and is at work on her first novel.

Jennifer Stanley is the author of multiple mystery series under the names Jennifer Stanley, J.B. Stanley, and Ellery Adams. Raised as antique-lover by her grandparents and parents, Stanley has worked part-time in an auction gallery and taught 6th Grade Language Arts in North Carolina. An eBay junkie and food lover, Stanley lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, two young children, and three cats.

Zachary Steele was born in Orlando, Florida, and has called Miami, Phoenix, Roanoke, and Richmond, Virginia--as well as various ports of call in and around Metro Atlanta-- home.  He has been featured on NPR and in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Publisher's Weekly, and Shelf Awareness.  His first novel, Anointed, has been nominated for the 2010 Sidewise Award for Alternate Fiction.  His second novel, Flutter, is due out in July of 2010.

Kristin Swenson, Ph.D. is the author of three books, including Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time (Harper 2010), and a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has written for Huffington Post, Washington Post's "On Faith" blog, Beliefnet,and Christian Century, among others. 

In lieu of a law degree, Jason Tesauro pursued wine school and his affection for Viognier. By day, he serves as marketing director for Barboursville Vineyards. By night, Tesauro is coauthor of The MODERN GENTLEMAN: A Guide to Essential Manners, Savvy & Vice (Ten Speed Press, 2002) and The MODERN LOVER: A Playbook for Suitors, Spouses & Ringless Carousers (Ten Speed Press, 2004). He pens a wine & spirits column for The Sunday Paper (Atlanta, GA) and Richmond magazine, as well as manners/dating/sex/relationships columns for Maxim, Men's Health, Cosmopolitan, and Match.com. As a media spokesman, Tesauro has partnered with Johnnie Walker Blue, Orient-Express, and The Ritz-Carlton, where he currently leads The Modern Gentleman seminar series in Tysons Corner, VA.  He is currently writing his first novel.

George Tisdale is a creative director and copywriter who sought the answer to “How many bank ads can one person write?” when he was a senior writer and VP at Martin Retail of The Martin Agency. (Eventual answer: Too many.) His consultancy Can’t Stop Writing LLC serves financial, industrial and educational clients, non-profits, and marketing communications firms, among them ColorTree Envelope, Communication Design, CornerStone Partners, The Flores Shop, Genworth Financial, JHI, St. Christopher’s School, William and Mary, Virginia Historical Society, and Wealthcare Capital Management. George attends most JRW events, serves as a JRW Conference volunteer, and will edit JRW’s twice-monthly Get Your Word On newsletter. He is currently working on a novel about a not-quite-starving sculptor who enters the world of mail-order collectibles and barely escapes with his sanity. And the girl.

Charles Todd is a mother and son writing team. Caroline Todd’s MA in international relations led to a lifetime of adventure around the world. Her background in history and her enthusiasm for suspense films led to creating a detective who had to make his own decisions and live with his own conscience. Charles Todd has been a board member of Mystery Writers of America and National Secretary, as well as President of the Southeast Chapter. His experiences as a corporate troubleshooter shaped his interest in writing psychological suspense set in post-World War I Britain where the detective is still master of the crime scene.

John Ulmschneideris currently the University Librarian and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he serves on the Equity and Diversity Advisory Committee, the Council of Deans, and the University Council. He has held many positions with other libraries including ones at North Carolina State University, College of William and Mary, and the National Library of Medicine. He has published several articles, including "Integrated Electronic Document Delivery: Linchpin for Campus Information Systems" (EDUCOM Review 27, 1996) and "A Model Automated Document Delivery System for Research Libraries" (Advances in Library Administration and Organization 12, 1994).

Jeff VanderMeer has had novels published in fifteen languages, won multiple awards, and made the best-of-year lists of Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, the LA Weekly, and many others. His award-winning short fiction has been featured on Wired.com’s GeekDad and Tor.com, as well as in many anthologies and magazines, including Conjunctions, Black Clock, and in American Fantastic Tales (Library of America). His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and hundreds of others. In addition, he has edited or co-edited more than a dozen influential fiction anthologies for, among others, Bantam Books and Pan Macmillan. On the pop culture front, VanderMeer’s work has been turned into short films for PlayStation Europe and videos featuring music by The Church. With his wife Ann, he has lectured, conducted master classes, and given workshops all over the world, including at the Brisbane Arts Center in Australia, the University of California at San Diego, and Wofford College, in South Carolina. He is a frequent guest of honor at conferences around the world, including such events as Utopiales in France, the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, the Brisbane Writers Festival in Australia, Finncon in Helsinki, and the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis.

Mary Ellen Ward has been the Managing Editor of Food & Wine magazine and books for the past 16 years. During this time, she has overseen the hiring of staff, budgets, production, contracts and rights. Previously, Ward oversaw the editorial side of American Express Publishing’s Custom Publishing unit, where she worked with clients to create editorial packages. She started her publishing career as an editor at Travel & Leisure magazine. A Minnesota native, she currently lives in Manhattan, spends summer weekends at the Jersey Shore and makes several trips a year to the land of Dylan, Prince, Westerberg, Mauer, Morneau, Peterson – and (perhaps?!?!) Favre.

Paul Whitlatch is an assistant editor at the Scribner imprint of Simon & Schuster. His authors include the novelists David Goodwillie and David Whitehouse, journalist Daniel Hernandez, and architecture critic Witold Rybczynski. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of New York University, Whitlatch began his editorial career at W. W. Norton & Company. He has worked on projects by a range of bestselling authors, including Stephen King, former first lady Laura Bush, Don DeLillo, Colm Toíbín, Mary Roach, Kai Bird, Ruth Rendell and Kathy Reichs.

Jacqueline Woodson is a three-time Newbery Honor winner, a two-time National Book Award Finalist, winner of a Coretta Scott King Award and three Coretta Scott King Honors, and the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her contributions to young adult literature.  Her many award-winning novels include Locomotion, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Miracle’s Boys.  She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

Michele Young-Stone is the author of the debut novel The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors (Shaye Areheart, 2010).  At age 30, Michele decided to quit teaching and write the book she’d been dreaming of writing since she was seven years old.  Miraculously, it happened.  Since completing The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, Michele continues to write about miracles large and small.  A fan of the underdog, her characters have been described as “endearing losers,” “complicated, nuanced and sympathetic.”  Michele currently resides in Richmond, VA with her husband, son, dog, some hermit crabs and a showy fish.  A very long time ago, Michele was struck by lightning and survived.

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