PANEL SESSION I
Navigating Identities: Writing Across Cultural Lines
David Furlong is co-writing a memoir with his wife Saloma. He was educated in Catholic schools in the Hudson Valley and public schools in Vermont and studied economics at the University of Vermont. He was the project manager under NEH grants at the Shelburne Museum where he researched and wrote articles on historic buildings that were published in the Shelburne News. He is working on a degree in energy efficiency and has completed a “deep energy retrofit” on his 1920s home.
Saloma Furlong was born in Ohio and lives in Sunderland, Massachusetts. Her memoir WHY I LEFT THE AMISH was published in January 2011. She graduated from Smith in 2007 where she earned the Anita Luria Ascher Memorial Prize. She also interned with Dr. Donald Kraybill and studied abroad in Germany. She has published short stories in Calyx and in Vermont Voices III. She is promoting her first book and writing her second memoir.
Francie Lin grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. She has worked as a journalist, editor, and teacher, and in 2001 received a Fulbright Fellowship to Taipei, Taiwan. Her first novel THE FOREIGNER won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel. She lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Sabina Murray is Professor of English and currently directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing at UMass Amherst. She is the author of four books, including the PEN/Faulkner Award winning THE CAPRICES. Murray was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her screenplay for BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY. She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, and a Brown Award for the Novel from the University of Pittsburgh. A fifth book, TALES OF THE NEW WORLD, is forthcoming this fall.
Moderator Jean Marie Ruiz’s poetry has appeared in Jacaranda Review, West/word, Rain City Review, and the anthology Love’s Shadow (Crossing Press). Her short story Pilgrims’ Progress received MARY’s fiction award in 2004. She holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is at work on a novel. She lives in South Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Shaping the Story
Emily Arsenault’s first novel THE BROKEN TEAGLASS, set in a dictionary company, was a New York Times Notable Crime Book of 2009. Her second novel, IN SEARCH OF THE ROSE NOTES – about two 11-year-old girls who try to solve their teenage babysitter’s disappearance using Time-Life books about the paranormal as their investigative guide — will be released in August 2011. She lives in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, where she is at work on her third novel.
Sally Bellerose is author of the novel THE GIRLS CLUB which won the Bywater Prize. Bellerose was awarded an NEA Fellowship based on an excerpt from this book. The first chapter won first place in fiction from Writers at Work. Excerpts have been published in Love Shook My Heart, The Sun, The Best of Writers at Work, Cutthroat, and Quarterly West and won the Rick DeMarinis Award.
Andrea Hairston is author of REDWOOD AND WILDFIRE (Aqueduct 2011) and MINDSCAPE, shortlisted for the Phillip K Dick and Tiptree Awards and winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. She teaches playwriting and screenwriting at Smith College. Her plays have been produced at Yale Rep, the Kennedy Center, and on Public Radio and Television.
Susan Stinson, moderator, won the 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize for FAT GIRL DANCES WITH ROCKS, MARTHA MOODY, and VENUS OF CHALK. BELLY SONGS is her collection of poetry and lyric essays. She recently completed SPIDER IN A TREE, a novel about 18th-century Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards. She is Writer in Residence at Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts.
First Book Stories
Marianne Banks spent 25 to 30 years writing her first novel GROWING UP DELICIOUS which will be published by Bella Books, a lesbian press. When she was growing up, there were few stories about girls like Marianne so she wanted to write some. She learned to drive a tractor at 12 and can still muddle through butchering a cow or stringing a barbed wire fence.
Ellen Meeropol is a literary late bloomer who is fascinated by characters who balance on the fault lines of ethical dilemma and moral ambiguity. Her short fiction has appeared in Shaking Like a Mountain, Pedestal Magazine, The Drum, Portland Magazine, Bridges, and other publications. Her first novel, HOUSE ARREST, was published in February 2011.
Randy Susan Meyers is the author of THE MURDERER’S DAUGHTERS, released by St. Martin’s Press in January 2010. Her family drama is informed by her work with batterers and victims of domestic violence, as well her experience with youth impacted by street violence. The Los Angeles Times deemed the book “A knock-out debut.” Just named a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, it was chosen the Target “Club Pick” for February/March and as a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Council for the Book.
Jacqueline Sheehan, moderator, is the bestselling author of three novels: TRUTH, LOST & FOUND, and NOW & THEN. Her fourth novel will be published in 2012. She teaches writing at Grub Street, in Boston, and Writers in Progress, in Florence. This year she was a writing fellow at Jentel Arts in Wyoming.
PANEL SESSION II
Exploring the Avenues and Lanes of Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Holly Black is the author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books for kids and teens. Some of her titles include the Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony Diterlizzi), the Modern Faerie Tale series, the Good Neighbors graphic novel trilogy (with Ted Naifeh), and her New Curse Workers series, which began with WHITE CAT. The second book, RED GLOVE, has just come out. She has been a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, a finalist for an Eisner Award, and the recipient of the Andre Norton Award. She currently lives in New England with her husband, Theo, in a house with a secret door.
Barbara Edwards, author of ANCIENT BLOOD and ANCIENT AWAKENING, is a native New Englander with a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Hartford. A past president of the Central Florida Romance Writers and a member of Romance Writers of America, she founded the Charter Oak Romance Writers, a Chapter of Romance Writers of America, along with several close friends. She’s married to a retired police sergeant. She loves Civil War re-enacting, and visiting museums, art galleries, and battle sites. She taught romance writing at Manchester Community college for three years. She writes historical romance, romantic suspense, and paranormal romance.
Corrina Lawson, a former newspaper reporter, is co-editor of GeekMom and a core contributor to its brother site GeekDad on Wired.com. She has been a finalist in the national Golden Heart contest sponsored by the Romance Writers of America and is the winner of several regional RWA contests. She is the author of DINAH OF SENECA, an alternate history romance, and FREYA’S GIFT, as well as the upcoming books EAGLE OF SENECA and PHOENIX RISING, a superhero romance.
Tanya Shersnow, moderator, is a 32-flavors kind of gal. After earning a BA in Environmental Science and Modern Dance from Franklin Pierce College in 1995 she moved to western Massachusetts where she has done everything from plotting home septic systems to developing photographs of far away and all too close places. In her latest employment adventure she offers guidance to customers who are looking for alternative health care in which her knowledge of herbal lore and motherhood combine with her need to express herself in words that can be scientific and fantastic all at the same time. Her musings and meanderings can be found on her blog Balefire’s Heat: ramblings from a mind scorched by time. Her herbal knowledge is cultivated within her business which is called Moon Butterfly Herbals.
Telling True Stories
Mira Bartók is a Chicago-born artist and writer and the author of 28 books for children. Her writing has appeared in several literary journals and anthologies and has been noted in The Best American Essays series. She lives in Western Massachusetts where she runs Mira’s List, a blog that helps artists find funding and residencies all over the world and North of Radio, a multi-media collaborative. The New York Times bestselling memoir THE MEMORY PALACE is Mira’s first book for adults.
Alison Bass, moderator, is author of SIDE EFFECTS: A PROSECUTOR, A WHISTLEBLOWER AND A BESTSELLING ANTIDEPRESSANT ON TRIAL and Visiting Senior Lecturer at Mount Holyoke College.
Ted Gup is author of the bestselling THE BOOK OF HONOR: COVERT LIVES AND CLASSIFIED DEATHS AT THE CIA, NATION OF SECRETS: THE THREAT TO DEMOCRACY AND THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE, winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and A SECRET GIFT: HOW ONE MAN’S KINDNESS — AND A TROVE OF LETTERS — REVEALED THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION. His work has appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Salon, Slate, NPR, Time, the New York Times, and GQ. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar to China, and a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government. He chairs the journalism department at Emerson College in Boston.
While becoming a writer, Bruce Watson worked as a factory hand, a journalist, a bartender, an office temp, a Peace Corps volunteer, and an elementary school teacher. His books include FREEDOM SUMMER, SACCO AND VANZETTI, BREAD AND ROSES, and THE MAN WHO CHANGED HOW BOYS AND TOYS WERE MADE. As a frequent contributor to Smithsonian, Watson wrote more than 40 feature articles on articles ranging from eels to Ferraris to the history of Coney Island. His articles have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, American Heritage, Yankee, and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003.
Say What? A Workshop on Dialogue
Devon Ellington publishes under half a dozen names in fiction and nonfiction. Her latest book is ASSUMPTION OF RIGHT (as Annabel Aidan), published digitally. Her plays are published in New York, London, Edinburgh, and Australia. She teaches online and in person all over the world. Visit her blog on the writing life, Ink in My Coffee.
PANEL SESSION III
How Agents Think
Jenny Bent founded The Bent Agency in March 2009, after six years at Trident Media Group, most recently as a Vice President. She specializes in fiction, from the very literary to the very commercial, as well as memoir, women’s lifestyle, and humor. Her New York Times bestselling clients include Jacqueline Sheehan, Lynsay Sands, Julia London, Michael Farquhar, John Kasich, and Laurie Notaro.
Susan Cohen has been at Writers House for 30 years. She specializes in children’s books: picture books, non-fiction, and fiction up through YA. Clients include Newbery Medalist Susan Patron; author/illustrator Jeanette Winter; novelist Susan Beth Pfeffer; and veterans Tony Johnston, Kathleen Krull and Elaine Scott. Among her adult writers are Alan Arkin, whose memoir was published this year; an author of women’s self-help (Ellie Slott Fisher); and one writer of women’s fiction (Liza Gyllenhaal).
Lindsay Edgecombe is an agent at the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. She represents journalists, debut novelists, crafty sorts, and cartoonists, among many others. She loves to uncover new talent and to work with her clients to develop great proposals from the spark of an idea. Her authors have contributed to NPR’s This American Life, written for the New York Times and The New Yorker, and have been on Oprah and The Daily Show.
Moderator Boris Kolba is writer, editor, and consultant in the educational publishing industry. He has been involved with Write Angles since 2003, and this is his first year moderating the agents’ panel. It’s a reasonably safe bet Boris will be the only writer at the conference with nothing to pitch.
Jessica Sinsheimer has been reading and campaigning for her favorite queries since 2004. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she went east for Sarah Lawrence College and stayed for the opportunity to read soon-to-be books for a living. Now an Associate Agent at the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency, she’s developed a reputation for fighting office members to see incoming manuscripts first – and for drinking far too much tea.
Word Play – Experiments in Poetry
Patricia Lee Lewis was born and raised in Texas. Since 1997 she has led creative writing and yoga retreats at Patchwork Farm, in Texas, the Berkshires, and at sacred sites around the world. She holds an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College and a BA from Smith College, Phi Beta Kappa. A member of Straw Dog Writers Guild, Texas Writers League, Berkshire Writers Room, and Amherst Writers & Artists, her poetry, fiction, and feature articles have appeared in Hear a Poet, There a Poet, 30 Poems in November!, The Berkshire Review, Upstreet, Sanctuary, Drive By Poets and Crossing Paths: An Anthology of Poems by Women. She is the author of two books of poems: A KIND OF YELLOW, which was awarded first prize for self-published poetry books by Writers Digest International, and HIGH LONESOME, published by Hedgerow Books.
D M Gordon’s poems and stories have been published widely. Prizes include The Betsy Colquitt Award from descant, The Editor’s Choice Award from the Beacon Street Review, a First Prize for a short story from Glimmer Train. She is a Phi Beta Kappa and has a Masters in Music from Boston University. She’s the recipient of a 2008 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in fiction. She’s been an equestrian and chamber musician and currently works as a freelance editor in both poetry and prose. She facilitates weekly public discussion of contemporary poetry, in its ninth year, for Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is the author of FOURTH WORLD (Adastra Press) and NIGHTLY, AT THE INSTITUTE OF THE POSSIBLE (Hedgerow Books). She’s currently at work on a novel set in the islands of British Columbia.
