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Presenters
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Mike Allen (The Last Redoubt: Writing Short Stories for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Markets) by day is the arts and culture columnist for The Roanoke Times. Over 20 years more than 30 of his stories and more than two hundred of his poems have appeared in venues ranging in style from literary to unabashed pulp. His poetry collection Strange Wisdoms of the Dead was a Philadelphia Inquirer Editor's Choice Selection in 2006. In 2009 his horror tale "The Button Bin" was a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has edited seven anthologies of his own, including the critically acclaimed Clockwork Phoenix trilogy, several stories from which have been reprinted in various Best of the Year volumes. He is editor and publisher of Mythic Delirium, a poetry journal. |
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Maryke Barber, (Free Tools for Streamlining, Saving and Organizing Your Information). is the Outreach and Arts Liaison Librarian at Wyndham Robertson Library, Hollins University. She has master's degrees in information science (University of Tennessee) and theatre (Virginia Commonwealth University), allowing her to find a nice life balance somewhere between database maintenance and tap dancing. |
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Rod Belcher (Selling the Sense of Wonder: Writing, Marketing and Surviving Science Fiction/ Fantasy and Horror Novels) is the owner of Cosmic Castle gaming store in Roanoke and is an award-winning science fiction writer, who recently sold his first novel. Belcher has been a freelance journalist, as well, contributing to such publications at Valley Business FRONT, Blue Ridge Business Journal and Virginia Business magazine. Studied forensic science at George Washington University, knows telepathic communication, and was a private investigator for 10 years. |
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Mollie Cox Bryan, (The Mystery Writer's Toolbox), is a food writer with a penchant for murder. Her first mystery, Scrapbook of Secrets, will be published by Kensington in February. Lois Winston says of the book "Imagine the housewives of Wisteria Lane sipping tea, scrapbooking, and solving murders, and you have this gem of a debut ..." Her second cookbook, Mrs. Rowe’s Little Book of Southern Pies (Ten Speed Press/Random House 2009) is a regional bestseller that continues to top the Amazon charts. She's a regular essayist on WVTF Public Radio. |
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Dave Cohan, (Copyright Basics and Current Legal Issues) is a partner with the law firm of Gentry Locke Rakes & Moore in Roanoke. His focus includes copyright, trademark, business transactions, and negotiating and drafting contracts. He has expertise in the rights of independent contractors. |
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Doug Cumming, (Structuring your (Nonfiction) Storytelling) is an associate professor of journalism at Washington & Lee University with 26 years' experience as a writer and editor at newspapers and magazines. He has won a George Polk Award and a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. His most recent book is The Southern Press: Literary Legacies and the Challenge of Modernity. |
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Tom Field, (What Makes That Writer So Great Anyway?) has been a contract writer for more than three decades. He has written for a variety of media, including trade magazines, and corporations worldwide. He owns Berryfield, Inc., a marketing services company and is the publisher and creative director for FRONT magazine. Winner of the Perry F. Kendig Literary Award, given by the Arts Council of the Blue Ridge. |
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Rachael Garrity (Marketing Your Self-Published Book) is the owner of Penworthy LLC, a New River Valley-based publications services and consulting firm. She is a freelance writer of some note, as well, and has recently entered the book publishing business. |
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Amy Gerber-Stroh (Getting Your Story in Motion: Film and Screenplay Writing) is an assistant professor of film at Hollins University in Roanoke. She earned an MFA at California Institute of the Arts, School of Film/Video and has produced and directed more than 30 documentaries and art films. She has had significant professional film experience in Hollywood and New York, working on several movie features by Roger Corman and as casting associate on 12 major motion pictures, including "Goldeneye" and "The Mask of Zorro." Her documentary feature, "Public Memory," was completed in 2004. Her latest documentary, "My Grandfather Was a Nazi Scientist," was in the 2011 festival circuit. |
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Cathryn Hankla (Conference-opening talk: Plant Trees Without Stakes for Best Results) is the author of 11 books of fiction and poetry, most recently the story collection, Fortune Teller Miracle Fish in 2011. Her essays, poetry and fiction appear in literary journals nationwide. She is a professor of English, serves as poetry editor of The Hollins Critic and directs the creative writing MFA program and the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins. |
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Gina Holmes (Writing and Getting Your Novel Published) is the founder of a literary site thrice named as one of Writers Digest's best websites for writers - Novel Rocket. Her debut novel was an Amazon, ECPA, CBA and PW bestseller and finalist in the Christy Awards, Christian Retail's Retailer's Choice Award, and Book of the Year Award, as well as winning an INSPY and RWA's Reader's Choice Award. Gina is the author of the novels Crossing Oceans and Dry as Rain. |
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Sarah Beth Jones (The No B.S. Guide to Freelancing) is a veteran newswoman who owns—with her husband Rob—Nary Ordinary Business Services (NO B.S.) in Floyd. She is a former columnist for the Greensboro News & Record and a ghost writer for industry papers. She is a native of North Carolina. |
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Janeson Keeley (Marketing Your Self-Published Book with Dan Smith) of JTKWeb in Roanoke specializes in website development, search engine optimization and search engine submission.She is also founder of TweetVA, Virginia's Twitter Directory. She’s a former Internet columnist for Valley Business FRONT magazine. |
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Bill Kovarik (Why New Media Changes the Way We Write and What We Can Do About It) is a professor of communication at Radford University, teaching journalism, media history, media law and science writing. He has written extensively about media technology and environmental history for publications ranging from The New York Times to Earth Island Journal. His professional experience as a journalist includes reporting and editing for columnist Jack Anderson, the Associated Press, The Charleston (S.C.) Courier, The Baltimore Sun, Time-Life Books, Business Publishers, Appalachian Voice and the National Center for Appropriate Technology. He is also environmental historian and has served as a consultant for "Bill Moyers Now." He has degrees from VCU, South Carolina, and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. He has written four books and working on a history of sustainable energy. He edits the online publication, New River Voice. |
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Darrell Laurent, (The Writers Bridge: Finding Jobs for Writers) is the lead columnist for the Lynchburg News & Advance and has been for nearly a quarter century. He has written several books about Lynchburg and environs and is working on his first novel, set in Southside Virginia and involving—you guessed it—a journalist. He is founder of The Writers Bridge, a national consortium of writers. |
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Roland Lazenby (Keynote Address: Thinking Big in Books; Class:The Six-Figure Book Sale) is author/co-author of more than 60 titles. His latest is a biography, Jerry West, The Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon, a Los Angeles Times bestseller. He is at work on a biography of Michael Jordan for Little, Brown. He is a former publisher, journalist, and force behind a Virginia Tech student website that garnered acclaim for its coverage of the Tech shootings. He has taught journalism at Virginia Tech and Radford University. |
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Brooke McGlothlin (Self-Publishing: The Whys and the Hows) received her B.S. in psychology from Virginia Tech (1999) and her master's in counseling from Liberty University (2003) and has two self-published books; Notes to Aspiring Writers: Your Dream, God’s Plan, and the best-selling Warrior Prayers: Praying the Word for Boys in the Areas They Need it Most. Created the 21 Days of Prayer for Sons challenge to compliment the Warrior Prayers book. Blogs at A Life in Need of Change and tweets as @BrookeWrites. |
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Beth Macy (Notice What You Notice: How To Find, Recognize and Hunt Down Story Ideas) is the families beat reporter at The Roanoke Times, where she’s worked off and on since 1989. Her stories about aging, race and immigration have won more than a dozen national awards. A 2010 Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, Macy produced a multimedia series called "Age of Uncertainty," about the challenges facing seniors and caregivers in this region. The series won "Documentary Project of the Year" by Pictures of the Year International, as well as the Associated Press Managing Editors' award for online convergence, a Casey Medal for coverage of families and the Virginia Press Association's top public-service reporting prize. Macy has taught literary journalism at Hollins University and writes freelance articles and essays, most recently for O, The Oprah Magazine; Parade magazine; The Chronicle of Higher Education and American Journalism Review. Her November 2010 story about cholera in Haiti won the 2011 Associated Press Managing Editors award for international reporting. |
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Michael Miller (Simplifying the World Through Words: The Art of Writing About Complex Subjects) is senior licensing manager for Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties in Blacksburg. He is the technology columnist for Valley Business FRONT and his consulting company is Kire Technology. He spent more than 25 years as an inventor, technology manager, and tech business consultant, working with Fortune 500 companies and startups. He screens businesses for presentation to the World’s Best Technology Showcase and provides mentoring for tech startups through association with Development Capital Networks and the National Science Foundation. He has been an essayist for Public Radio, a columnist for The Roanoke Times and an NCAA photographer. |
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Jim Minnick (Playing with Words: What Poetry Can Teach the Prose Writer About Metaphors and Word Play) is the author of The Blueberry Years, winner of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance's Best Nonfiction Book for 2010. Minick has written a collection of essays, Finding a Clear Path, two books of poetry, Her Secret Song and Burning Heaven, and he edited All There Is to Keep by Rita Riddle. In 2008, the Virginia College Bookstore Association awarded Burning Heaven the Jefferson Cup for best book of the year. He teaches writing and literature at Radford University and lives with his wife and dogs. |
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Joe Schaben (Managing Your Freelance Writing Income) is a partner in the CPA firm of Boitnott and Schaben in Daleville. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Virginia Society of CPAs. He has served as the former president and board member of the Roanoke Valley Chapter of the Certified Public Accountants. |
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Peggy Shifflett ("The Memoir") is a Harrisonburg native who lives in Salem and is a graduate of James Madison University and Texas A&M University, where she earned her Ph.D. She recently retired as chairwoman of the sociology department at Radford University. She has written three books about growing up in Appalachia: The Red Flannel Rag: Memories of an Appalachian Childhood (the 2005 Shenandoah Valley Folk Life Award for preservation of Shenandoah Valley history); Mom’s Family Pie: Memories of Food Traditions and Family in Appalachia (stories, recipes and family tales); and The Living Room Bed: Birthing, Healing, and Dying in Traditional Appalachia dealing with the life cycle of Appalachian families. |
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Dan Smith, (Marketing Your Self-Published Book with Janeson Keeley) is a 2010 inductee into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame, and founding editor of Valley Business Front Magazine. Journalist for more than 40 years, winning awards in every significant discipline. Virginia Business Journalist of the Year 2005; awards for business ethics, environmental education, environmental journalism, support of the arts and the first (2009) Perry F. Kendig Literary Arts Award. Active community volunteer. Has written five books and is award-winning public radio essayist and prize-winning photographer. Founder and director of the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference and the Women’s Forum at Hollins. |
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Nat Sobel (Advice From Literary Agents) founded Sobel Weber Associates in New York in 1970. He is a former bookseller, publisher's sales rep., marketing director, and subsidiary rights agent. He holds a B.A. in English from the City College of New York. He is a founder of the New York Literary Writers Conference. |
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Matthew Vollmer (Creating Fraudulent Artifacts: How to Construct Stories That Masquerade as Other Forms of Writing) is the author of Future Missionaries of America, a collection of stories. With David Shields, he is the co-editor of Fraudulent Artifacts: An Anthology of Pseudo Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Dubious Documents (forthcoming from W. W. Norton). His work has appeared in Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Epoch, Tin House, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Antioch Review, Portland Review, Confrontation, Salt Hill, Fugue, PRISM International, and New Letters. Vollmer holds an MFA in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is an assistant professor at Virginia Tech. |
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Judith Weber (Advice from Literary Agents) joined Sobel Weber Associates literary agency in New York in 1977, following several years as director of publicity, promotion and advertising and in senior editorial positions with major publishers. She is a graduate of Brooklyn College with a bachelor’s degree in English and New York University with a master’s degree in English. She has been a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and of Les Dames d'Escoffier. She is a founder of the New York Literary Writers Conference. |
