2010 Authors

Anjail Rashida Ahmad, "The Essence of Poetry Writing"

Category: Writing Workshop for Beginners
Festival Year, Time & Place: 12:30 p.m. at Signature, 534 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

      A poem should share a moment of awareness with the reader. In this season of harvest, we will gather from our fields of memory, story and experience the necessary elements to support an exploration of the machinations’ of good poetry writing such as image construction, form choices  and narrative development toward expanding the poetic skills of participants. Come prepared to explore, envision and to create poems that live on the page.

      Award-winning poet and Director of the Creative Writing Program at NC A&T State University, Dr. Anjail Rashida Ahmad delivers moving and transformative workshops and readings. As a blind poet, Ahmad supports participants in “seeing” themselves within the stream of history and helps them write historically and culturally inspired poems drawn from photos, family history, and tradition. Ahmad is published in journals such as The Black Scholar, The African American Review, Washington Square Review, and Ikon. She has won the Robert Frost Prize in Poetry, the Southern Literary Festival Prize for Poetry and was nominated for the Human Rights Medal for community service and efforts at social justice in the area of disability rights in 2006. Founder of Black Ink Writers Workshop for writers of the African Diaspora in Greensboro, she has is the author of the color of memory and necessary kindling.

Linda Beatrice Brown

Category: Young Readers Central 
Festival Year, Time & Place: 2:30 p.m. at Young Readers Central at the City Market Stands/Downtown School on September 11, 2010

Linda Beatrice Brown is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Bennett College for Women.  Since her first writing award, a second prize in a creative writing contest while a student at Bennett, she has won first prize for fiction from the NC Coalition of the Arts and a residency at the Headlands Center near San Francisco by the NC Arts Council.  She is the author of Black Angels, Rainbow ‘Roun Mah Shoulder, Crossing Over Jordan, A Love Song to Black Men and The Long Walk, as well as other works published in Black Scholar, Religion and Intellectual Life, O Henry Festival Stories and others.

Presented with support from Texas Pete 

Christopher Cardinale

Category: Young Readers Central / Illustrator
Festival Year, Time & Place: 12:00 p.m. at Blue Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Christopher Cardinale is a cartoonist and a community muralist with a social justice message. Inspired by Mexican muralism and anarchist punk collectives, Christopher works within grassroots organizations in a variety of communities. He has painted large-scale murals promoting community values and social-economic justice in New York, Italy, Greece and Mexico. His graphic novel, Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush, is based on a short story of the same name by Alberto Luis Urrea. Ages 12 and up.

Presented with support from the Hispanic League

Billy Collins

Category: Poetry

Festival Year, Time & Place: 10 a.m. at Sixth Street Main Stage on September 11, 2010

The New York Times has hailed Billy Collins as the most popular poet in America, and, indeed, his last three published collections have surpassed sales records for poetry. Collins was selected in 1994 as Poetry magazine’s poet of the year. In 2001, he was appointed as the National Poet Laureate, a position in which he served two terms. Mr. Collins has received fellowships from such distinguished institutions as the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His multiple collections of poetry include Sailing Alone Around the Room, Ballistics, and Questions About Angels. Mr. Collins currently serves as Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York, where he has been part of the faculty for more than 30 years.

Melissa Conroy

Category: Young Readers Central
Festival Year, Time & Place: 12:30 p.m. at Young Readers Central at the City Market Stands/Downtown School on September 11, 2010

Melissa Conroy taught herself to sew in second grade and she hasn’t stopped since. In addition to sewing, she has several other creative outlets, for which she has earned advanced degrees including Painting and Textile Design. Her list of Alma Maters includes the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Georgia and Philadelphia University where she teaches a digital design class, another of her many interests. She is the author and illustrator of Poppy’s Pants and has completed her second children’s book to be released soon. Conroy lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Carol Crane

Category: Young Readers Central 
Festival Year, Time & Place: 11:00 a.m. at Young Readers Central at the City Market Stands/Downtown School on September 11, 2010

Carol Crane is the author of fourteen books including Handkerchief Quilt and D is for Dancing Dragon: A China Alphabet. Traveling around the country, she speaks at reading conventions and schools, networking with children and educators across the country. Crane, with forty years experience in children's literature as an educational consultant, has become widely recognized by many schools and educators for her expertise in children's literature.

Presented with support from Once Upon an App

Major Brian Dennis

Category: Young Readers Central
Festival Year, Time & Place: 3:30 p.m. at Young Readers Central at the City Market Stands/Downtown School on September 11, 2010

Major Brian Dennis is a fighter pilot by training and a major in the U.S. Marine Corps who has served in Iraq three times, with a fourth deployment scheduled to Afghanistan. He has recently written his first book, Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine & a Miracle, about his chance encounter with an Iraqi dog of war and the unlikely friendship they formed. The book recounts the major’s journey to bring Nubs to safety in the United States. Co-written by Kirby Larson, acclaimed Newbery Honor-winning author, and Mary Nethery, author of such picture books as Hannah and Jack and Mary Veronica’s Egg, Major Dennis’s inaugural work has charmed young and adult readers alike. Major Dennis and Nubs currently live in San Diego.

Frank Deford

Category: Fiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 12:00 p.m. at Speak Easy, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Described as the “world’s greatest sportswriter,” Frank Deford is senior contributing writer for Sports Illustrated, commentator for National Public Radio, and correspondent for Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO. He is the author of 16 books, including The Entitled, Everybody’s All-American, and the New York Times bestseller Alex: The Life of a Child.  His newest novel, Bliss, Remembered, offers a memorable love story, set at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and America during World War II. He is a six-time winner of the Sportswriter of the Year Award. He has won a Peabody, an Emmy, and countless other awards. Deford is a graduate of Princeton University, where he taught in American Studies.

Presented with support from Salemtowne Continuing Care Retirement Community

Bonnie J. Doerr

Category: Panel Participant of Writing a Mystery with Bonnie Doerr, John Hart and Erica Spindler

Festival Year, Time & Place: 11 a.m. in the Blue Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

A lifetime educator, Bonnie J. Doerr, author of Island Sting, a 2011 nominee for YALSA's crime scene list, and the forthcoming Stakeout, has taught students from kindergarten to college in eight states. Degrees in reading education, combined with a brief post as a science teacher, led her to write ecological mysteries celebrating “green” teens who take action. Years of teaching and living in the Florida Keys provided irresistible material. Her work has been honored by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) with a grant for its use in environmental education. When not nurturing her muse in the Florida Keys, she lives in a log cabin in North Carolina.

Presented with support from the Forsyth County Public Library On the Same Page Program

Zee Edgell

Category: Fiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 2:30 p.m. at Artworks Gallery, 654 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

Zee Edgell is an award-winning Belizean novelist, who was educated at Regent Street Polytechnic and the University of the West Indies. After working as a schoolteacher and newspaper editor, she became the Director of the Belizean administration’s Department of Women's Affairs and has been an educational consultant since 1990. Beka Lamb, her first novel and the first Belizean work of fiction to attract international notice, parallels the growth to maturity and independence of its female protagonist with the emergence and consolidation of Belize's sense of national identity. Edgell’s other novels include In Times Like These, The Festival of San Joaquin, and Time and the River. After 16 years of teaching creative writing, she retired from Kent State University.

Erica Eisdorfer

Category: Panel Participant for Emerging Voices, Fiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 11 a.m. in the Red Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Erica Eisdorfer, author of The Wet Nurse’s Tale, has managed the Bull’s Head Bookshop on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill for more than twenty years. Eisdorfer served as her local NPR affiliate’s book reviewer for 10 years and her book reviews and articles have appeared in various magazines and newspapers including Travel & Leisure , The Lincoln Center Theater Review, and American Bookseller. She is the editor of the coffee-table photo book Carolina: Photographs from the First State University.

Alexander Ewing

Category: Nonfiction: Biography / Performing Arts
Festival Year, Time & Place: 10:30 a.m. at 5ive and 40rty, 541 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

Alexander Ewing lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and serves as a board member of North Carolina Audubon of Winston-Salem’s Arts Based Elementary School.  He is an honorary trustee of the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) Ballet Theatre Foundation in New York, and most recently, authored BRAVURA! Lucia Chase and the American Ballet Theatre. From 1990 – 2000, Ewing served as Chancellor of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Formerly, he also served as General Director of the Joffrey Ballet in New York (1965-70); Founder and Chairman of the Foundation for American Dance; and Chairman of the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library.

Anna Fields

Category: nonfiction / memoir
Festival Year, Time & Place: 3:00 p.m. at Urban Artware, 207 West Sixth Street on September 11, 2010

Anna Fields is a New-York based television writer and comedienne. As a native Southerner and Ivy League graduate, Fields’ intimate knowledge of cotillion, single-sex education and “Debbing”—one of America’s oldest, most exclusive rites of passage—is first-hand and unsurpassed. After attending Brown University, Fields relocated to Los Angeles, where she worked in Television Packaging, feature development and production.  Having been awarded a full Dean’s Fellowship from the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing, Fields completed her MFA in Playwriting at New York University. Her numerous plays have been staged in Arizona, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and New York. Fields’ rollicking, unlikely success story, Confessions of a Rebel Debutante, is her first book.

Diana Gabaldon

Category: Fiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 1:00 p.m. at Sixth Street Main Stage on September 11, 2010

Diana Gabaldon is the New York Times bestselling author of the wildly popular Outlander novels—Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, and A Breath of Snow and Ashes, and, most recently, An Echo in the Bone. She is also the author of one work of nonfiction, The Outlandish Companion, as well as the bestselling series featuring Lord John Grey, a character she introduced in Voyager. Her most recent novel, The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel, will be released September 21, 2010. She holds a master’s degree in marine biology and a Ph.D. in ecology and spent a dozen years as a university professor. Her previous publishing history includes scholarly articles and comic book stories for Walt Disney.

Publication Pathways 2010 with Judith Geary

Category: Workshop for Writers - All Levels
Festival Year, Time & Place: 2:00 p.m. at Signature, 534 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

You can be published! This workshop includes explanations of currently available paths to publication from finding the right agent to represent you to choosing the right publishing service for your family memoir.  Ebooks are an evolving technology, and the gateways and challenges seem to change daily, so this workshop will explore current options. Tips and tactics can make your own journey to publication more rewarding.

Judith Geary joined Bob and Barbara Ingalls in forming High Country Publishers in 2001 and still edits for its successor, Ingalls Publishing Group, Inc. She has edited and/or designed over 40 titles, working with award-winning and bestselling authors, and with independent projects. She has taught in the Department of Communication at Appalachian State since 1985 and currently serves as an evaluator for International Future Problem Solving.  Her own writing passion is historical fiction and her Young Adult Getorix series, set in ancient Rome, which is endorsed regionally for classroom use.

Aviva Goldfarb

Category: Food for Thought
Festival Year, Time & Place: 1:00 p.m. at Food for Thought, Millennium Center Dock, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Like many busy moms, Aviva Goldfarb struggled to put a nutritious dinner on the table for her family amidst the chaos of daily life.  In 2003 Aviva developed The Six O’Clock Scramble, an online service that takes the stress out of daily dinners for busy families.  Each week, members receive a suggested seasonal meal plan with five days' worth of dinner recipes, side dishes, and an organized grocery list.  The cookbook debuted in 2006 to national acclaim and won praise from reviewers at O Magazine, Working Mother, USA Today, Real Simple and The Washington Post, among others. Goldberg’s latest cookbook SOS! The Six O’Clock Scramble to the Rescue: Earth-Friendly, Kid-Pleasing Dinners for Busy Families combines her expertise in meal planning with her concern for the environment.  In addition to more than 300 recipes, the book addresses how families can make their meals more environmentally-friendly.

Kathleen Grissom

Category: Fiction / Panel Participant for Emerging Writers

Festival Year, Time & Place: 11 a.m. in the Red Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Kathleen Grissom was born and raised in Saskatchewan, Canada. When she moved to Virginia with her husband to restore an antebellum home, its history so captivated her that she began to research and then finally to write The Kitchen House. Presently, she is researching and writing her next book, tentatively titled Crow Mary. It is based on the true life story of a Crow Native woman who, in 1872, married a well-known fur trader. 

Trudier Harris 

Category: Nonfiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 10:30 a.m. at Artworks Gallery, 654 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

Trudier Harris was J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English Emerita at UNC-Chapel Hill from 1979 until her retirement in July, 2009.  The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South was designated by Choice as one of the “Outstanding Academic Titles” for 2009 in its “best of the best” listings.  It also won the 2010 College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award.  Her memoir, Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South, was chosen by the Orange County, NC Commission on Human Relations to inaugurate its One-Book, One-Community Reading Program for 2003-2004. She is the author of many books including Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison and Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature. An award-winning teacher and scholar, she was awarded the UNC System Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2005. In April of 2010, she was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.

John Hart 

Category: Fiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 2:00 p.m. at Speak Easy, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

John Hart is the award-winning author of three New York Times bestsellers, The King of Lies, Down River, and The Last Child. These international bestsellers have been translated into 26 languages and published in over 30 countries. A graduate of Davidson College, Hart earned graduate degrees in accounting and law and worked as a banker, stockbroker and attorney. In 2009, he was awarded the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for best thriller of the year for The Last Child. In 2008, Down River won the Edgar Award for best mystery from the Mystery Writers of America.

Presented with support from the North Carolina Writers’ Network and the Forsyth County Public Library On the Same Poem Program

Rachel Keener

Category: Fiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 10:30 a.m. at Urban Artware, 207 West Sixth Street on September 11, 2010

Rachel Keener is the author of The Killing Tree and The Memory Thief.  Both novels are inspired, in part, by her Appalachian heritage and her childhood spent in the mountains of Southwest Virginia and the foothills of East Tennessee. A graduate of Carson-Newman College, Keener moved to North Carolina to attend law school at Wake Forest University. It was during an intense law class that she began writing The Killing Tree, which was completed when she graduated.  

John Kerr

Category: Fiction / Panel Participant on Sense of Place

Festival Year, Time & Place: 3:30 p.m. on the Sixth Street Main Stage on September 11, 2010

Houston native John Kerr is a former attorney and investment banker. His novel, Cardigan Bay, is both an espionage thriller and a romance set during World War II. It was chosen by British Scholar as its Book of the Month in October 2008. The story is woven from several threads, some of them fairly well known - such as the elaborate and ongoing planning for the Normandy invasion by the Allies, the work of the top-secret code-breakers at Bletchley Park and the plot by anti-Nazi German military officers to assassinate Hitler. Cardigan Bay is a meticulously researched historical tale set in World War II, told in the measured voice of a historian.

Jo Ramsey Leimenstoll and Patricia Phillips Marshall 

Category: Nonfiction 
Festival Year, Time & Place: 1:00 p.m. at 5ive and 40rty, 541 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

Jo Ramsay Leimenstoll is a preservation architect and a professor in the UNC Greensboro Department of Interior Architecture where she teaches advanced interior architecture studios as well as courses in preservation theory and architectural conservation. Concurrent with her teaching since 1985, Leimenstoll and her husband, Jerry, have maintained a small architectural practice specializing in the restoration and rehabilitation of historic buildings. 

Patricia Phillips Marshall is Curator of Decorative Arts for the North Carolina Executive Mansion and the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. She holds an M. A. in Historical Administration from Eastern Illinois University. Marshall has spent the last 29 years working in the public history field at state museums in Kansas and Georgia before joining the North Carolina Museum of History in 1992 where she more than doubled the museum’s collection of Thomas Day furniture.

Robert LeLeux

Category: Nonfiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 12:00 p.m. at Artworks Gallery, 654 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

Robert Leleux is the author of The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, a comedy about the end of his teenage years and his parents’ messy divorce. Compared to David Sedaris for his wit and humor, Leleux teaches creative writing in New York City schools and writes regularly for the Texas Observer.

Finding Your Voice in Oral Literature with Andrew Leslie

Category: Workshop for Writers: Basics of Oral Storytelling - For all ages!
Festival Year, Time & Place: 3:30 p.m. at Signature, 534 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

This workshop is offered for those interested in becoming oral storytellers, whether reading to children or performing before a large audience.  Oral literature such as folk and fairy tales loses its performative character when it is confined to the written page.  This workshop shows participants how to hear the voice of a written story.  Tips and techniques for adaptation of a written story for oral performance will be offered, as well as some hands-on exercises.

Andrew Leslie has been a professional storyteller for 20 years.  He has performed in festivals, and taught workshops on storytelling and the psychological aspects of oral literature and storytelling. Leslie holds a PhD in Communication Studies, and teaches at Salem College. He was storyteller-in-residence at Wake Forest University Press’s Irish Festival for its 10-year run, and co-founded the nationally-acclaimed Wild Onion Storytelling Festival in Chicago.

Patrick McDonnell 

Category: Fiction                                                        Festival Year, Time & Place: 2:30 p.m. at Sixth Street Main Stage on September 11, 2010

New York Times best-selling author Patrick McDonnell is a dedicated animal advocate and creator of the award-winning MUTTS comic strip, which appears in 700 newspapers in over 20 countries. MUTTS has been recognized by critics for its distinctive style, heartwarming humor, and strong yet responsible social commentary on important issues like responsible pet ownership, animal advocacy and adoption, and promoting the sanctity of all life. Mutts: The Comic Art of Patrick McDonnell, was published in 2003. In 2007, The Best of MUTTS was released containing a decade of McDonnell’s favorite strips along with insightful commentary. Shelter Stories: Love. Guaranteed features his popular animal shelter-themed strips accompanied by real-life pet adoption stories submitted by readers worldwide. McDonnell is also the author of many children’s books which feature the MUTTS characters including Hug Time, South and The Gift of Nothing. The Earl & Mooch Treasury will be released this fall. McDonnell received the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year. His official website, muttscomics.com, receives roughly one million visits each month.  

Presented in honor of Victor F. Harllee, Jr. 

Christopher McDougall

Category: Nonfiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 11:30 a.m. at Sixth Street Main Stage on September 11, 2010

Christopher McDougall is the author of the 2009 best-selling book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. In the book, McDougall tracks down members of the reclusive Tarahumara Indian tribe in the Mexican Copper Canyons and has received attention in the sporting world for his description of injuries overcome by modeling his own running regimen after the Tarahumara. He is a former war correspondent for the Associated Press and is now a contributing editor for Men’s Health. A three-time National Magazine Award finalist, McDougall has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, and Men’s Journal.

Presented with support from Village Yoga Studio 

Joan Nathan

Category: Food for Thought
Festival Year, Time & Place: 10:00 a.m. at Food for Thought, Millennium Center Dock, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Joan Nathan is the author of ten cookbooks and a regular contributor to The New York Times. She is the author of the much-acclaimed Jewish Cooking in America, which in 1994 won both the James Beard Award and the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook of the Year Award; as well as An American Folklife Cookbook, which received the R.T. French Tastemaker Award in 1985. Her forthcoming book, out in November from Knopf, is Quiches, Kugels and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France.  Previously, she has authored The New American Cooking which also won the James Beard and IACP Awards as best American cookbook published in 2005. Her other books include Foods of Israel Today, Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook, The Jewish Holiday Baker, The Children's Jewish Holiday Kitchen, and The Flavor of Jerusalem.

Kathy Patrick 

Category: Fiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 2:00 p.m. at Blue Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

When licensed cosmetologist turned publisher’s rep Kathy Patrick lost her job due to industry cutbacks she opened Beauty and the Book, the world’s only combination beauty salon/bookstore. An instant hit with customers, who flocked to the store for her dual beauty/book tips, Kathy soon founded The Pulpwood Queens of East Texas. The group meets monthly in official Pulpwood Queens attire—anything that includes hot pink, leopard print, and the obligatory tiara—to eat, drink, and talk books. In The Pulpwood Queens Tiara Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide To Life, Patrick shares her story of how books have changed her life, how she chooses selections for the Pulpwood Queens, and how to start a book group and keep it going!  

Irania Macias Patterson

Category: Young Readers Central - A Program in Spanish and English
Festival Year, Time & Place: 1:30 p.m. at Young Readers Central at the City Market Stands/Downtown School on September 11, 2010

Irania Patterson is a bilingual children’s specialist for the public library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. She is also a children’s author and a master teaching artist for the Kennedy Center and the Wolftrap Foundation for the Performing Arts. Her Latino children’s picture book Chipi Chipis, Small Shells of the Sea was an International Reading Association Children’s Choice for 2006. Originally from Venezuela, her newest book, Wings and Dreams: The Legend of Angel Falls, will be released this fall.

Presented with support from the Hispanic League

Charles P. Pierce

Category: Nonfiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 10:00 a.m. at Speak Easy, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Charlie P. Pierce is a nationally-known American sportswriter, author, and game show panelist who currently writes for the Boston Globe Sunday magazine. His latest book is Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. He has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, GQ, and others. Pierce makes appearances on radio as a regular contributor to the NPR programs Only A Game and Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!. His sports writing has been anthologized in Sports Guy: In Search of Corkball, Warroad Hockey, Tiger Woods, and the Big, Big Game.

Kenneth A. Posner

Category: Nonfiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 3:30 p.m. at Speak Easy, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Author of Stalking the Black Swan: Research and Decision Making in a World of Extreme Volatility, Posner is a financial services industry analyst. He is a fifteen-year veteran of Morgan Stanley where he served as managing director and senior research analyst and where his work received high rankings from Institutional Investor and Greenwich Associates. He is currently the Chief of Investment Analysis and Research at North American Financial Holdings, Inc. He earned his MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and holds the Certified Public Accountant, Chartered Financial Analyst, and Financial Risk Manager designations.

Lulu Powers

Category: Food for Thought
Festival Year, Time & Place: 11:30 a.m. at Food for Thought, Millennium Center Dock, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Since founding her catering company in 1995, Lulu Powers is a chef and lifestyle guru to such celebrities as Madonna, Bill Clinton, and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith. Lulu Powers Food to Flowers is a one-stop-guide for all things entertaining. Powers shares her inspired take on entertaining, investing every detail, from food to décor, with her distinctive sparkle and personality. As one of one of Los Angeles’s premier party planners, Powers makes party-planning (not just party-going) fun again.

Jack Riggs

Category: Fiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 11:30 a.m. at 5ive and 40rty, 541 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

Bestselling novelist Jack Riggs is the author of two award-winning novels, When the Finch Rises and The Fireman’s Wife. He is known for his edgy but honest character portrayals. The American Library Association recognized Finch as a Top Ten First Novel. Riggs is The Writer-in-Residence and Associate Professor of English at The Writers Institute at Georgia Perimeter College and a two time winner of the Georgia Author of the Year Award.  

Speak Up: The Public Speaking Primer with Carol Roan

Category: Workshop for Writers: All Writing Levels
Festival Year, Time & Place: 11:00 a.m. at Signature, 534 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

Public speaking is number one on the fear chart, but, as writers, we participate in readings, poetry slams, and more to share our work. This workshop will give participants the tools to use fear to their advantage and to replace the debilitating symptoms of stage fright with positive performance techniques. Participants will learn how to provide what their audiences want and need, how to handle “mistakes,” and the differences between public and private communication.  

Carol Roan teaches voice and stage presence in Winston-Salem. Her experience in teaching stage presence - how to communicate with an audience - began with her voice students, expanded into the first college-level course for musicians in the United States, and broadened to include other professions in her book, Speak Up: The Public Speaking Primer. Her other writing credits include Clues to American Dance and co-editor of the anthology, When Last on the Mountain: The View from Writers over 50. Her fiction has won a fellowship to Summer Literary Seminars Russia 2006, Honorable Mention in the 2009 Elizabeth Simpson Smith Short Fiction Contest, and a finalist for the 2010 Doris Betts Fiction prize.

Erica Spindler

Category: Fiction - Mystery
Festival Year, Time & Place: 1:00 p.m. at Blue Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

A New York Times and international bestselling author, Erica Spindler’s skill for crafting engrossing plots and compelling characters has earned both critical praise and legions of fans. She is the author of Blood Vines, In Silence, Red, Breakneck, Copycat, Killer Takes All, Fortune, Last Known Victim, Forbidden Fruit, All Fall Down, Chances Are, Heaven Sent, Baby Mine, and more. Bone Cold won the prestigious Daphne du Maurier Award for excellence.

Presented with support from the Forsyth County Public Library On the Same Page Program

Jade Teta and Keoni Teta

Category: Nonfiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 10:00 a.m. at Red Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

The Teta brothers are the creators and founders of the Metabolic Effect workout, nutrition and lifestyle program. They are holistic physicians and strength and conditioning specialists who work as doctors and personal trainers specializing in hormonal fat loss. They are in private practice at the Naturopathic Health Clinic of NC one of the leading natural health centers in the state. They have a combined 30 years in the fitness industry, 15 in holistic medicine, and have done over 10,000 workouts with clients of all ages and fitness levels. They write a monthly column called “Exercise is Medicine” in Townsend Letter and write regularly for such publications as Onfitness Magazine, Natural Triad and Twin Cities Naturally. Doctors Teta have recently completed their first book on their unique fat loss system, The New ME Diet.

Fred Thompson 

Category: Food for Thought
Festival Year, Time & Place: 2:30 p.m. at Food for Thought, Millennium Center Dock, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Fred Thompson is the author of nine cookbooks including Grillin’ with Gas, Bourbon, and Barbecue Nation, a collection of grilling and barbecue recipes from “regular folks” around the country. He is a popular teacher of grilling skills at cooking schools throughout the nation. Thompson is a frequent television and radio guest who has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking Magazine, Better Homes and Garden, Cornbread Nation, Everyday with Rachel Ray, Wine and Spirits, Family Circle, Taste of the South, and others. Fred publishes and is Executive Editor for Edible Piedmont, celebrating local food in North Carolina. He also writes The Weekend Gourmet column for the News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Tim Tingle 

Category: Young Readers Central 
Festival Year, Time & Place: 10:00 a.m. at Young Readers Central at the City Market Stands/Downtown School on September 11, 2010

An Oklahoma Choctaw, Tim Tingle is an accomplished author and storyteller who delivers lively historical and traditional stories, accompanying himself on the Native American flute and singing Choctaw songs to the rhythms of a whaleskin drum.  He has performed in festivals and conferences covering 40 states, and completed 11 performance tours for the US Department of Defense. Tingle also performs regularly at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee.  He has guest-lectured at numerous college campuses on Native American folklore and in 2003 earned his Master of Arts degree in the English Department at the University of Oklahoma.  In 2004, he founded the Choctaw Storytelling Festival, a three-day celebration of the Choctaw narrative. His latest book, Saltypie, is a modern Choctaw story of family reconciliation.

Presented with support from UNCG University Libraries through the Pam and David Sprinkle Children's Author and Storyteller Series Fund

Wanda Urbanska

Category: Nonfiction
Festival Year, Time & Place: 3:00 p.m. at 5ive and 40rty, 541 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

Wanda Urbanska has helped to identify simplicity as one of the top trends of our time and explores this subject in her most recent book, The Heart of Simple Living: 7 Paths to a Better Life. She is sought-after for her insights and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today show, CBS This Morning and NPR’s All Things Considered, among others. Her writing has been published in USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and in such magazines as Vogue, Glamour and Shape. She has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the London Daily Telegraph and many others. Recently, Urbanska returned to her home state of North Carolina from a seven-month sabbatical in Poland, where she explored her familial roots with her 12-year-old son.

Ursula Vernon

Category: Young Readers Central
Festival Year, Time & Place: 1:00 p.m. at Red Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Ursula Vernon is the author and illustrator of children’s books Nurk, Digger, and the text and graphic novels, Dragonbreath, Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs, and Dragonbreath: Curse of the Were-Wiener, released this fall. Her work has been nominated for an Eisner award, “Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition,” and a number of Webcomics Choice Awards. After moving across the country several times, Vernon settled in Pittsboro, North Carolina, where she works full-time as an artist, writer, and creator of oddities.

Watts Wacker

Category: Nonviction / Marketing / Business

Festival Year, Time & Place: 1 p.m. at Artworks Gallery, 654 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

Time Magazine’s 2006 person of the year, Watts Wacker is one of the most celebrated and influential minds in modern business. His uncommon versatility and vision has allowed him to help the world’s top corporations and organizations navigate the sea of change that is taking hold in the new millennium.  Named one of the 50 most influential business thinkers in the world, he is founder and director of FirstMatter LLC.  The 500 Year Delta was an international bestseller having been translated into ten languages and was an "editors choice" top five selection on the Amazon.com book list. The Visionary's Handbook is required reading at many of the world's finest business schools and received outstanding reviews.  Both books were coauthored with Jim Taylor. The Deviant’s Advantage received a tremendous reviewer response including Time Magazine, Fortune, The N.Y. Times, and The Harvard Business Review. What’s Your Story? Storytelling to move markets, audiences, people and brands, was a finalist for advertising/marketing book of the year. Both books were co-authored with Ryan Mathews.

Panel: Getting Immigration Right

Category: Panel Discussion

Festival Year, Time & Place: 4:00 p.m. at Red Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

Hear experts discuss the important topic of immigration. The Question and Answer Session will be in Spanish and English. Translators will also be available during the presentation.

David Coates holds the Worrell Chair in Anglo-American Studies in the Department of Political Science at Wake Forest University. English by birth and American by citizenship, he has written extensively on labor politics, political economy and public policy in both the US and the UK. Recent publications include Answering Back: Liberal Responses to Conservative Arguments and (with Peter Siavelis) Getting Immigration Right: What Every American Needs to Know.

Peter Siavelis is Associate Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University. He received his PhD from Georgetown University and has held visiting appointments in Chile and Spain.  He is the author of The President and Congress in Post-authoritarian Chile and Institutional Constraints to Democratic Consolidation.  His current research focuses on political recruitment and candidate selection in Latin America, having published an edited volume entitled Pathways to Power: Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection in Latin America with Scott Morgenstern.

Presented with support from the Hispanic League

Emily Herring Wilson

Category: Nonfiction / Biography

Festival Year, Time & Place: 1:30 p.m. at Urban Artware, 207 West Sixth Street on September 11, 2010

Emily Herring Wilson lives and gardens in Winston-Salem, NC. After publishing poetry and teaching creative writing, she began her focus on women's lives and, awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, wrote Hope and Dignity: Older Black Women of the South. Among Wilson's publications are Memories of New Bern, For the People of North Carolina, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation at Half-Century, and North Carolina Women: Making History.  In homage to the South's best garden writer, Elizabeth Lawrence, Wilson wrote the first Lawrence biography, No One Gardens Alone.  She has received the North Caro­lina Award, the Caldwell Award and is a MacDowell Colony Fellow.

Kim Wright

Category: Fiction - Panel Participant for Emerging Voices

Festival Year, Time & Place: 11 a.m. in the Red Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

The Future of the Book

Category: Panel Discussion
Festival Year, Time & Place: 4:00 p.m. at Artworks Gallery, 654 North Trade Street on September 11, 2010

Barry Miller is Director of Communications and External Relations for the University Libraries at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  A native of Winston-Salem, he holds a Masters Degree in Library Science from UNC-Chapel Hill and a B.A. from Wake Forest University. He has spent thirty years in libraries, mostly as a corporate librarian in Winston-Salem, before joining UNCG, where he describes his job as "telling the library's story."

Carolyn Sakowski is a graduate of Queens College and holds a master’s degree in history from Appalachian State University. Since 1992, Sakowski has been the president of John F. Blair. Under her guidance, the company has grown into one of the region’s most respected publishers. Sakowski has twice served as president of the Publishers Association of the South and has served on the faculty at the Denver Publishing Institute. In 2002, she received the Robin Mays Award which acknowledges sustained contributions to book publishing in the southern U.S. She is the author of Touring the Western North Carolina Backroads and Touring the East Tennessee Backroads and is a co-author of Travel North Carolina: Going Native in the Old North State.

Lee Thompson is a marketing executive with broad-based experience including strategic marketing planning, product acquisition and development, branding, global marketing communications management, new business development, strategic alliances and partnership building and sponsorship and event marketing. Before moving to Winston-Salem, she was the VP, Director of Marketing and Membership for the New York Academy of Sciences. Prior to that Lee was the Executive VP, Director of Marketing for TEXERE LLC, a global non-fiction publisher of business, finance, investment, economics, marketing and business technology books headquartered in NYC and London. For the decade before founding TEXERE, Lee was Group VP of Marketing for John Wiley & Sons, Inc. managing a 108 member marketing team in seven countries for one of the USA's 10 largest publishers.

Myles C. Thompson joined Columbia University Press as the publisher of the finance and economics list. In October 2007, the Press founded its first specialized imprint, Columbia Business School Publishing, in collaboration with Columbia Business School, with Thompson as its editor and publisher. Prior to joining CUP, Thompson founded TEXERE, a global non-fiction publisher in finance, economics, marketing and technology. Thompson holds a BA and MA in Anglo-Irish Literature from the National University of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland. He has lectured for the NYU Publishing Institute in NYC and Beijing.

Writing a Mystery with Bonnie J. Doerr, John Hart and Erica Spindler

Category: Panel Discussion
Festival Year, Time & Place: 11:00 a.m. at Blue Room, Millennium Center Basement, 101 West. Fifth Street on September 11, 2010

In honor of the On the Same Page Program’s pick for 2010, The Maltese Falcon, written by Dashiell Hammett, the featured writers will discuss how they approach writing a mystery.

Presented with support from the Forsyth County Public Library On the Same Page Program 

Panel: Sense of Place with Diana Gabaldon, Rachel Keener and John Kerr

Category: Fiction / Panel

Festival Year, Time & Place: 3:30 p.m. on the Sixth Street Main Stage on September 11, 2010

The setting, which includes the time and place, is a key element of any story. Details that describe the setting might include weather, time of day, location, landscape, and even furniture. All of these details contribute to the understanding of a scene. Each of the featured authors will address the importance of place in their novels.