Festival Author Biographies
Kristy Andersen is a documentary filmmaker whose films reflect the environment and culture of Florida. As Producer and Writer of Jump At The Sun, Andersen researched in eight states, uncovering materials that brought new insight into Hurston's life story. Her work has been funded by the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. She lives in Treasure Island, and has a degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Florida.
Julie Buckner Armstrong is an associate professor of English at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. She is coeditor of Teaching the American Civil Rights Movement: Freedom's Bittersweet Song and editor of The Civil Rights Reader: American Literature from Jim Crow to Reconciliation (Georgia).
Raymond Arsenault is the John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History at USF St. Petersburg, where he has taught since 1980. A native of Cape Cod, he was educated at Princeton University and Brandeis University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1981. Arsenault is the author or editor of seven books, including Crucible of Liberty: 200 Years of the Bill of Rights (1991); The Changing South of Gene Patterson: Journalism and Civil Rights, 1960-1968 (2002), co-edited with Roy Peter Clark; Paradise Lost? The Environmental History of Florida (2006), co-edited with Jack E. Davis; The Sounds of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America (2009); and Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (2006, Abridged Edition 2011). The abridged edition of Freedom Riders is the companion volume to the American Experience documentary film, Freedom Riders, directed by Stanley Nelson. The documentary recently won three Emmy Awards. Arsenault is currently writing a biography of the legendary African-American tennis star Arthur Ashe. |
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Born in Alabama, Ace Atkins began his career as a correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times and moved on to work as a crime reporter for the Tampa Tribune. While at the Tribune, Atkins earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination for a feature series based on his investigation into a forgotten murder of a woman in the 1950s, called "Tampa Confidential". That series led him to his critically acclaimed novel, White Shadow. He is the author of three other historical crime novels, including Wicked City, Devil's Garden (nominated for a 2010 Hammett Prize) and Infamous, as well as a series of four Nick Travers novels. His short story, "Last Fair Deal Gone Down", was nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award. He lives on a historic farm outside of Oxford, Mississippi, with his family. To read a Times interview with Ace Atkins, click here.
Edwin Black is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling and international investigative author of 80 award-winning editions in 14 languages in 65 countries, as well as scores of newspaper and magazine articles in the leading publications of the United States, Europe and Israel. With more than a million books in print, his work focuses on genocide and hate, corporate criminality and corruption, governmental misconduct, academic fraud, philanthropy abuse, oil addiction, alternative energy and historical investigation. Editors have submitted Black's work ten times for Pulitzer Prize nomination, and in recent years he has been the recipient of a series of top editorial awards. Black's ten award-winning bestselling books are IBM and the Holocaust (2001), British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement (2011), The Farhud (2010), Nazi Nexus (2009), The Plan (2008), Internal Combustion (2006), Banking on Baghdad (2004), War Against the Weak (2003), The Transfer Agreement (1984) and a 1999 novel, Format C:.
Professor Lawrence Broer is an internationally acclaimed scholar of Modern and Postmodern American and British literature. He has published widely in critical collections and professional journals, and has authored or edited eight books, including Hemingway's Spanish Tragedy (University of Alabama Press, 1973), Sanity Plea: Schizophrenia in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut (UMI Research Press, 1989; revised ed., University of Alabama Press, 1994), Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike's Rabbit Novels, ed., (University of Alabama Press, 1998), and Hemingway and Women: Female Critics and the Female Voice, co-ed with Gloria Holland (University of Alabama Press, 2002). Professor Broer is presently Professor Emeritus of English at the University of South Florida, where he received the Theodore and Venette Askounes-Ashford Distinguished Scholar Award and the Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. He served as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Paris in 1981 and 1984, and has been a Senior Fulbright Specialist for the past five years.
Karen Brown was born in Connecticut. Her first collection of short stories, Pins and Needles, was the recipient of AWP's Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction and published by the University of Massachusetts Press. Her work has appeared twice in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, in Best American Short Stories, The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, and in many literary journals. Currently, she lives in Tampa, Florida and teaches creative writing at the University of South Florida. To read a Times review of Pins and Needles, click here.
To read a Times review of A Small Hotel, click here.
Jim Clark teaches history at the University of Central Florida. He earned his doctorate at the University of Florida after spending nearly thirty years as a journalist. He worked for United Press International, The Associated Press, The Raleigh News & Observer, Tampa Tribune and Orlando Sentinel. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Miami Herald, Washington Monthly and The Nation. Red Pepper and Gorgeous George is his fifth book. His academic work has been published in Florida Historical Quarterly, Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives, and Journalism Quarterly. He has been honored with the George Polk Award, Gerald Loeb Prize, several awards from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors and Florida Magazine Association, and Arthur Thompson Award. He lives in Orlando, FL.
Roy Peter Clark is vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, one of the most prestigious schools for journalism in the world. He has taught writing at every level- from schoolchildren to Pulitzer Prize winners- for more than thirty years and has spoken about the writer's craft on The Oprah Winfrey Show and NPR and at news organizations from the New York Times to The Sowetan in South Africa.
Tony D'Souza has contributed to The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, Outside, Salon, Granta, McSweeney's, and other magazines. He is a recipient of the Sue Kaufman Prize, the O. Henry Award, the Florida Book Awards gold and silver medals for fiction, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His novel The Konkans, was a Best Book of the Year in Washington Post Book World, Christian Science Monitor and Publisher's Weekly. Tony was nominated for a National Magazine Award for coverage of Nicaragua's Eric Volz murder trial and spent three years in Africa with the Peace Corps.
Bob Delaney has been a distinguished referee in the National Basketball Association for the past quarter century and, in June 2011, retired from the game as one of the most respected officials in league history. Prior to his NBA career, he spent fourteen years (1973-81) as a highly decorated New Jersey State Trooper. Delaney infiltrated organized crime families along the East Coast, going undercover on a mission that ultimately led to numerous convictions of mobsters. That experience was chronicled in his 2008 book, Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob, coauthored by Dave Scheiber and named a best book of the year by USA Today. His new book, also coauthored with Scheiber, is entitled Surviving the Shadows: A Journey of Hope Into Post-Traumatic Stress. Delaney has received numerous awards over the course of his career, including: The President's Volunteer Service Award from President Obama, outlining Delaney's ongoing PTSD awareness and education work with the military, law enforcement, firefighters, and first responders, and the United States Army Outstanding Civilian Service Medal. Delaney received the 2000 NBA Community Service Award and the National Association of Sports Officials Gold Whistle Award in 2003. He is in demand as a speaker at corporate meetings, sports banquets, social events, and schools throughout the country, and he has been featured on ESPN, ABC Sports, CNN, and HBO's Real Sports. Delaney earned a B.S. in Criminology from Jersey City State College and a Master of Arts in Leadership from St. Mary's College of California.
As an award-winning author, Nathalie Dupree has written eleven cookbooks and hosted over 300 television shows for PBS, The Learning Channel and The Food Network.
V. Mark Durand is a professor of psychology at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, where he was the founding Dean of Arts & Sciences and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Dr. Durand is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and has received over $4 million in research federal funding. Dr. Durand was awarded the University Award for Excellence in Teaching at SUNY- Albany in 1991 and in 2007 was given the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Scholarship at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, has written 10 books and has over 100 publications on functional communication, educational programming, and behavior therapy. Dr. Durand developed a unique treatment for severe behavior problems that is used worldwide. Most recently he developed an innovative approach to help families work with their challenging children (Optimistic Parenting).
Martin A. Dyckman, author of Reubin O'D. Askew and the Golden Age of Florida Politics, covered local, state and national government and politics as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist during a 46-year career with the St. Petersburg Times. From 1969 to 1976 he was chief of the newspaper's state capital bureau at Tallahassee, where his investigative journalism contributed prominently to the resignations of two Supreme Court justices and to the constitutional amendment providing for the appointment rather than election of Florida appellate judges. The Florida Bar Foundation recognized his articles on prison reform and judicial reform with its 1984 Medal of Honor award. His earlier books are Floridian of His Century: The Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins; and A Most Disorderly Court: Scandal and Reform in The Florida Judiciary, published by the University Press of Florida. The Collins biography won the Charlton Tebeau award of the Florida Historical Society. To read a Times review of Reubin O'D. Askew, click here.
Barry Estabrook is the author of Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. A James Beard Award-winning journalist, Estabrook was a contributing editor at Gourmet magazine until its closure in 2009. In addition to editing and writing regular feautres on food politics, he helped compile three anthologies of articles from the magazine for Random House/Modern Library and originated and developed the editorial plan for The Gourmet Cookbook. He was the founding editor of Eating Well magazine, co-founder of Chapters Publishing, and publisher at Houghton Mifflin Company, where he managed the cookbook and field-guide lines. His work has also appeared in the New York Times "Dining" section and the New York Times Magazine, Men's Health, Saveur, Gastronomica, TheAtlantic.com and many other national magazines, and he is the author of two crime novels published by St. Martin's Press. He has been anthologized in The Best American Food Writing 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2010. He was co-writer of Jacques Pepin's best-selling memoir, The Apprentice. Estabrook's blog is politicsoftheplate.com. To read a Times review of Tomatoland, click here.
John Fleming has been performing arts critic for the Times since 1991. His beat ranges from community theater to Broadway, modern dance to symphony orchestras. A onetime business editor at Georgia Trend magazine in Atlanta, he frequently writes about the finances and politics of the arts. Twice he won first-place awards from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, in 2002 for criticism and in 2004 for beat reporting on the Florida Orchestra. Fleming has worked as a staff writer for Metropolis in Minneapolis-St. Paul and the Chicago Reader. He was editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday magazine. From 2001-2007, he was on the executive board of the Music Critics Association of North America and now chairs its membership committee.
To read a Times review of How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly, click here.
Thomas French worked for 27 years as a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times, covering hurricanes and criminal trials and the secret lives of high school students. In 1998, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for Angels & Demons, a series that chronicled the murder of an Ohio woman and her two teenage daughters as they vacationed in Tampa. Two of his other serials, A Cry in the Night and South of Heaven, were later published as books. His most recent project, Zoo Story, explores the inner world of Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo and was published by Hyperion in July 2010. French is a Writing Fellow at the Poynter Institute and currently teaches at Indiana University's school of journalism, where he serves as the Riley Endowed Chair. He lives in St. Petersburg with his wife, Kelley Benham. To read a Times review of Zoo Story, click here.
Senator Bob Graham is the former two-term governor of Florida and served for 18 years in the United States Senate. This is combined with 12 years in the Florida legislature for a total of 38 years of public service. Bob Graham retired from public service in January 2005, following his Presidential campaign in 2004. Bob Graham is recognized for his leadership on issues ranging from education, economic development, healthcare, environmental preservation and his service on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence- including eighteen months as chairman in 2001-2002. After retiring from public life, Senator Graham served for a year as a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. In May of 2010, Senator Graham was appointed by the President to serve as Co-Chair of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. This followed his service as a Commissioner on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and as the Chairman of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. Currently he serves as chairman of the WMD Center, a 501c3 not for profit research organization which continues the work of the Commission. Senator Graham also serves as a member of the CIA External Advisory Board, as a member of the board of directors of several companies and as the chair of the Board of Overseers of the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida. Senator Graham is also the author of several books including America: The Owner's Manual, which teaches the skills of civic participation, and Keys to the Kingdom, a novel of suspense which draws upon his background in government and intelligence.
Laurens Grant received a Primetime Emmy as the Producer of the documentary Freedom Riders, the multi-Emmy winning documentary and the first feature-length film to tell the story of the 1961 freedom rides. Grant had the honor of working with Director Stanley Nelson on the film. Grant is currently directing a documentary on Jesse Owens for PBS' acclaimed history series American Experience. The film commemorates the 75th anniversary of the 1936 Berlin Games and the African-American sprinter's historic four gold medal wins in the face of Hitler's Nazi Germany. Before working in documentary, Grant was a foreign correspondent in Latin America writing for various outlets including Reuters and Newsweek. Grant is fluent in Spanish and French.
James W. Hall is the author of four books of poetry, The Lady from the Dark Green Hills, Ham Operator, False Statements and The Mating Reflex, a collection of short stories, Paper Products, a collection of essays, Hot Damn, and sixteen novels, including Under Cover of Daylight, Tropical Freeze, Bones of Coral, Hard Aground, Mean High Tide, Gone Wild, Buzz Cut, Red Sky at Night, Body Language, Rough Draft, Blackwater Sound, Off the Chart, Forests of the Night, Magic City, Hell's Bay and Silencer. His books have been translated into a dozen languages, including Japanese, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Romanian, Croatian, Dutch and Russian. Several of the novels have been optioned for film and Hall has written screenplays for two of those projects. His novels have been Book-of-the-Month and Literary Guild selections. He was a Fulbright professor of literature in Spain and is a professor of literature and writing at Florida International University. He and his wife Evelyn and their three dogs, Carrie, Stella and Maggie, divide their time between South Florida and the mountains of western North Carolina.
With nearly four million copies of her books sold worldwide, Angela Hunt is the best-selling author of The Tale of Three Trees and The Nativity Story. After five years of honing her craft and writing for magazines, Angela published her first book in 1988. Since then, she has written over one hundred books in fiction and nonfiction, for children and adults. In 2007, her book Don't Bet Against Me, written with Deanna Favre, spent several weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Angela's novels have won or been nominated for several prestigious industry awards including the Rita Award, the Christy Award, and the Holt Medallion. Romantic Times Book Club presented Angela with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. Angela's best-selling novel The Note was filmed as the Hallmark Channel's Christmas movie for 2007 and became one of the channel's highest rated original movies ever produced.
N.M. Kelby is also the author of The Constant Art of Being a Writer: The Life, Art & Business of Fiction (Writer's Digest Books), the story collection A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts (Florida and Minnesota Book Awards winner) and the novels Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar and Grill, Whale Season, In the Company of Angels, and Theater of the Stars. Named "Outstanding Southern Artist," Kelby's work has been optioned for film, translated into several languages, and offered by The Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and Quality Paperback Book Club. She is the recipient of several grants including a Bush Artist Fellowship. "Jubilation, Florida" was selected for NPR's "Selected Shorts," recorded by Joanne Woodward for the CD Travel Tales, and reprinted in New Stories from the South: Best of 2006. She writes the blog At Escoffier's Table, which examines the spiritual, ethical and literary implications of the culinary arts. www.nmkelby.com
Dr. Anna Lillios is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Central Florida. She received a B.A. degree from Bennington College, a M.A. from Wesleyan University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. At the University of Iowa, she worked as a translator/editor for Paul and Hualing Engle's International Writing Program, from 1978-85. Her academic interests center on literature of place, particularly Lawrence Durrell's Greece and Zora Neale Hurston's Eatonville, Florida. She's the author of Crossing the Creek: The Literary Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, published by the University Press of Florida (2009). She edited Lawrence Durrell and the Greek World (2004) and a special edition on Zora Neale Hurston for The Southern Quarterly. She's past president of the International Lawrence Durrell Society and the Florida College English Association. She's currently the executive director and a trustee of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society. She's the editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal, editor of The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature, and directs the Zora Neale Hurston Electronic Archive at http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~zoraneal.
Toni Lydecker is a food and culinary travel journalist, cookbook author and cooking teacher. She is the author of Seafood alla Siciliana: Recipes and Stories from a Living Tradition (2009) and Piatto Unico: When One Course Makes a Real Italian Meal (Fall 2011). Toni currently lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.
William McKeen teaches at Boston University, where he chairs the department of journalism. He is the author or editor of nine books, including the Hunter S. Thompson biography, Outlaw Journalist, called "admirable" and "haunting" by Christopher Hitchens in the Times of London. His next book is an anthology of stories about Florida childhoods called Homegrown, to be published in the fall of 2012. Earlier books include the memoir, Highway 61, about a 6,000-mile road trip with his oldest son, and Rock and Roll is Here to Stay, a mammoth history of popular music. McKeen is married, the father of seven children, and lives on the rocky coast of Cohasset, Massachusetts. He was on the University of Florida faculty for 24 years before joining the Boston faculty in 2010.
Virginia Lynn Moylan, an independent scholar, has been teaching English and American and British literature in Palm Beach County for 23 years. She attended the University of Florida and Florida Atlantic University, where she earned a B.A. in journalism and a M.A. in Multicultural Education. In 1996 she was nominated for the prestigious Dwyer Award for educational excellence. Moylan became interested in the life of Zora Neale Hurston in 1994 after meeting one of Hurston's close friends, Belle Glade resident Sara Lee Creech, who in 1952, with Hurston's help, created the first "anthropologically correct" (Hurston's phrase) black baby doll to be manufactured and sold in America. In 2002, disappointed in the lack of detailed biographical information on Hurston after she was falsely accused of molesting a young boy in Harlem in 1948, Moylan set out on a decade-long journey to uncover the details of Hurston's sunset years. In addition to Zora Neale Hurston's Final Decade, Moylan has written articles for various magazines and was a contributor to The Inside Light: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Deborah G. Plant (Praeger, 2010). She currently resides in West Palm Beach, Florida with her husband Jay, her son William, and her daughter Kate.
Don Van Natta Jr. is a national correspondent for the New York Times. He has been a member of three Pulitzer Prize-winning teams and is the author of the bestselling First Off the Tee and co-author of Her Way. He lives in Miami with his wife and two daughters. To read a Times review of Wonder Girl, click here.
Diana Reiss is a cognitive psychologist and professor in the Department of Psychology at Hunter College and the Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience Graduate Program of CUNY. She helped to envision and implement the Animal Behavior and Conservation (ABC) Master's Concentration in Psychology at Hunter College. She conducts research at the National Aquarium in Baltimore and a research associate at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in DC where she conducts her research with dolphins and elephants. She was director of the Marine Mammal Research Program at the Osborn Laboratories of Marine Sciences at the New York Aquarium and co-chair of the Animal Enrichment Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). She was the director and founder of the Marine Mammals Research Program at Marine World Africa USA in California. Dr. Reiss served as a science advisor of the Animal Welfare Committee of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. To read a Times review of The Dolphin in the Mirror, click here.
Patricia Rossi is an etiquette expert and author of Everyday Etiquette: How to Navigate 101 Common and Uncommon Social Situations (St. Martin's Griffin, 2011). She is a sought-after etiquette coach, public speaker, and television and radio personality. Rossi is NBC Daytime's national manners correspondent. Her weekly television segment "Manners Minute," for which she is both writer and on air talent, has been airing on NBC, CBS, Fox and ABC affiliates since 2006. She has been featured in publications such as USA Today, Guideposts, Real Simple, Parade, Good House Keeping, HGTV Magazine and many more.
Lori Roy was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas where she attended and graduated from Kansas State University. She began her career as a tax accountant, working in public accounting and for Hallmark Cards. Following several years of corporate life, Lori turned her daily focus to writing. Lori is the recipient of various awards including the Ed Hirshberg Award for Excellence in Florida Writing. Her work has appeared in the Wordsmith Literary Journal, the Chattahoochee Review and other regional publications. She currently lives with her family in the St. Petersburg area. Bent Road (Dutton, April 2011) is her first novel. To read a Times review of Bent Road, click here.
Dave Scheiber is a national award-winning journalist and coauthor with Bob Delaney of Surviving the Shadows: A Journey of Hope Into Post-Traumatic Stress (Sourcebooks). Scheiber, who also coauthored Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob with Delaney- named a best book of 2008 by USA Today- is a past first-place winner in one of the industry's most prestigious writing contests, the National Headliner Awards. He was also a member of a St. Petersburg Times team nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, for a series that won the National Education Writers Association first prize; a first-place winner for investigative reporting and feature writing in the Associated Press Sports Editors competition; and a recent National Institute for Health Care Management finalist for a story on military medicine. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications-- from cover stories in Sports Illustrated to the Washington Post to Fox Sports, where he currently covers all major professional sports in Florida as a roving columnist. Scheiber earned his B.A. in English from Swarthmore College and a M.A. in Public Affairs Journalism from American University. He resides in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he and his wife- parents of six children- perform in a popular classic rock band in the Tampa Bay area.
Tony Silvia is the author of five books: Student Television in America: Channels of Change (1998), Global News: Perspectives on the Information Age (2001), Baseball Over the Air: The National Pasttime on the Radio and in the Imagination (2007), Baseball's Father and Son Broadcasters (2009) and Power Performance: Multimedia Storytelling for Journalism and Public Relations (2011), intended for professional and citizen journalists, as well as journalism, media and communication students. Innovation Investment Journal listed Power Performance among this year's top 20 social media books. Dr. Silvia is a faculty member in the University of South Florida St. Petersburg's Department of Journalism and Media Studies. His professional background is in television news as a consumer reporter and news anchor in various local markets and as a correspondent for CNN. He has been honored with three Emmy Award nominations, an Associated Press Award for best documentary, and has authored dozens of academic and industry journal articles. In 2008, he was named a fellow of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Herb Snitzer's career covers 55 years of image making as well as being an author of six books, a co-founder of a freedom school which he directed for twelve years, a husband, father, grandfather. He is a former member of the executive committee of the St. Petersburg branch of the NAACP, and a third Vice President. He is the recipient of two social justice awards. His commitment to racial and social justice is a matter of public record. As a photo-journalist early in his long career he worked for Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post, Fortune, Time and many other magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times and London Sunday Times to name just a few. His images are also on over 200 CD and record covers. He moved to St. Petersburg in 1992 establishing a studio at Salt Creek Artworks.
Tammar Stein is the award-winning author of High Dive, which the popular website Teensread.com called "undoubtedly one of the best contemporary fiction novels this year." Light Years, an American Libraries Best Book for Young Adults, a Virginia Reader's Choice, a Texas high school summer reading book, which the Romantic Times called: "a must-read..." And Kindred, published in February by Knopf. Publihser's Weekly gave Kindred a starred review, calling it "A riveting tale, an angel book that stands out from the chorus." Presenting Lenore, a widely read Young Adult book blog wrote: "Kindred is a deep and unflinching exploration of faith, freedom of choice and sibling relationships... I was riveted by the personal, spiritual journey Miriam goes through." Tammar graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in English Literature. She lives in Tampa Bay with her family and a bilingual dog. To read a Times interview with Tammar Stein, click here.
Terry Tomalin moved to Florida in the spring of 1980 for the sun and surf. After graduating from the University of South Florida in 1983, Tomalin backpacked through Europe, returning a few months later to work for a small Central Florida newspaper, where his stories on the Ku Klux Klan resulted in the resignation of a local sheriff. Tomalin joined the St. Petersburg Times as a police reporter in 1986, but left 18 months later to backpack through New Zealand and Australia. He returned a year later and transferred to the Sports Department to cover the Great Outdoors. Over the past 18 years, he has lived with witch doctors in the Amazon, explored sunken Mayan archaelogical sites in Mexico, sailed to Cube, canoed to the Bahamas and swam around Key West. Tomalin loves to fish, surf, paddle and enjoy all Florida has to offer. A fellow of the prestigious Explorers Club in New York City, Tomalin holds a master's degree in Florida Studies and is actively involved in many community organizations, including the Boy Scouts of America.
Lisa Unger is an award winning New York Times and international bestselling author. Her novels have been published in over 26 countries around the world. She was born in New Haven, Connecticut (1970) but grew up in the Netherlands, England, New Jersey and New York City, where she graduated from the New School for Social Research. She now divides her time, along with her husband and daughter, between Florida and New York City. Her writing has been hailed as "masterful" (St. Petersburg Times), "sensational" (Publisher's Weekly) and "sophisticated" (New York Daily News) with "gripping narrative and evocative, muscular prose" (Associated Press). To read a Times interview with Lisa Unger, click here.
A copy editor at the St. Petersburg Times, Ian Vasquez is the author of three novels. His first, In The Heat, won the 2008 Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel, followed by Lonesome Point (2009) and Mr. Hooligan (2010), a neo-noir that has been praised for its plotting and dialogue and which the Washington Post called a "sharp and gritty novel of redemption and its costs." Vasquez earned and MFA at Florida International University in Miami and has worked in a variety of jobs, from psych ward to restaurant management. Vasquez lives in Apollo Beach with his family and is currently working on a political thriller set in Florida. To read a Times review of Mr. Hooligan, click here.
Sterling Watson is the author of five novels, including The Calling, Sweet Dream Baby, and Weep No More My Brother, which was nominated for the Rosenthal Award given annually by the National Academy Institute of Arts and Letters. His most recent novel, Fighting in the Shade, was published in 2011 by Akashic Books, and has been described by Dennis Lehane as "A brilliant, fearless look at the savage rites of passage that exist in the fraternity of American sports. A book as gripping and unforgettable as any in recent memory." Watson's short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Prairie Schooner, the Georgia Review, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Michigan Quarterly Review and the Southerrn Review. He is director of the Cretive Writing Program at Eckerd College and holder of the Peter Meinke Chair in Literature and Creative Writing. To read a Times review of Fighting in the Shade, click here. |
