Hailed as “very talented for his young years,” Benjamin Schoening is one of the up–and–coming musical talents of his generation. Although gifted with a rare and beautiful lyric baritone voice, Benjamin chose to begin his musical career as an orchestral French Horn player and later became a conductor; thus he is beginning his singing career later than most singers do.  However, his combination of talents and unusual abilities has allowed him to gain a unique insight into the music he performs and has caused immediate success as a singer.

Benjamin has enjoyed much success as a recitalist throughout the United States and Europe. Most recently he has performed recitals in the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Alabama.  His particular area of interest as an Art Song Recitalist is songs in the English language. His love for and understanding of poetry inspires his work in that area.

In addition to performing, Benjamin is a devoted teacher. He has served as a guest clinician for many events in the Midwest and Southwest United States and served as conductor of the 2007 Arizona Northeast Regional Honors Orchestra.  He is the former director of musical activities and professor of music at Northland Pioneer College (Arizona). Currently, Benjamin is presently an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin – Barron County, where he is Director of Campus Musical Activities, Director of the Holiday Festival, and Music Director/Conductor of the Red Cedar Choir.

Before coming to UW-Barron County, Eric was previously employed as a teaching assistant, lecturer, and adjunct professor at UW-Eau Claire, UW-Madison, and UW-Milwaukee. His areas of expertise are American politics, judicial politics, public law, political theory, and international relations.

Eric and colleague Benjamin Schoening recently published the book Don’t Stop Thinking about the Music: The Politics of Songs and Musicians in Presidential Campaigns (Lexington Books, 2012), which traces the use of music in presidential campaigns from the nation’s founding through the 2008 election. Eric’s first book, To Secure the Liberty of the People: James Madison’s Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court’s Interpretation (Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), explores Madison’s political theory when he drafted the Bill of Rights and compares it to how Supreme Court jusitices have used Madison as an authority when deciding cases.

Eric has also authored or co-authored in peer-reviewed journals including “Barron County Restorative Justice: The Role One Program Played in Reducing Juvenile Crime and Restoring Lives” (co-authored with Mary Hoeft, Protecting Children, 2009) and “The Influence of Magna Carta in Limiting Executive Power in the War on Terror” (Political Science Quarterly, 2011-12).

Eric is a former member of the Rice Lake City Council and currently serves as the Rice Lake Municipal Judge. He is also an attorney and a member of the Wisconsin Bar Association.    He lives in Rice Lake with his wife Julie, and their children, Maddie and Jackson. His hobbies include playing chess, and watching the Packers, Badgers, and Brewers.

Dean A. Kowalski received his A.B. from Ripon College and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; he is currently an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha. Specializing in the philosophy of religion, he has published research articles in such journals as Religious Studies and Philosophy and Theology. He is the author of Classic Questions and Contemporary Film: An Introduction to Philosophy (McGraw-Hill, 2004) and Moral Theory at the Movies: An Introduction to Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).  He as edited (and contributed to) three philosophy and pop culture books for the University Press of Kentucky: The Philosophy of The X-Files (2007, paperback 2009), Steven Spielberg and Philosophy (2008, paperback 2010), and The Philosophy of Joss Whedon (2011). Most recently, he has edited (and contributed to) The Big Bang Theory and Philosophy: Rock, Paper, Scissors, Aristotle, Locke (The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, 2012). He is married (Patricia) and has two children, Nicholas and Cassie.

Annelise Ryan is the pseudonym for the author of the Mattie Winston mystery series: WORKING STIFF (2009), SCARED STIFF (2010), FROZEN STIFF (2011), LUCKY STIFF (2012), and BORED STIFF (2013). She also had three suspense novels published by HarperCollins in the nineties under her real name (Beth Amos) and has a contract for three books in a new mystery series to be published under the pseudonym Allyson K. Abbott, featuring a Milwaukee based bartender named Mackenzie Dalton, the first of which is tentatively titled MURDER ON THE ROCKS. She has written more than 200 published articles, worked as a book reviewer for Barnes & Noble, and is an active member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. She is an RN whose past work experience has included everything from birth (obstetrics) to death (hospice). She currently works in an ER and enjoys a number of side hobbies, including competitive Scrabble, stained glass, and scuba diving.

Jess Lourey is the author of the Lefty-nominated Murder-by-Month mysteries set in Battle Lake, Minnesota, and featuring amateur sleuth, Mira James. November Hunt, the seventh in the series, hit shelves March 2012. In a starred review, Booklist says, “It’s not easy to make people laugh while they’re on the edge of their seats, but Lourey pulls it off!” Jess has also been teaching writing and sociology at the college level since 1998.

When not raising her wonderful kids, teaching, or writing, you can find her gardening, traveling, and navigating the niceties and meanities of small-town life. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, The Loft, and Lake Superior Writers, and serves on the national board of Mystery Writers of America.

Adrienne Giordano writes romantic suspense and women’s fiction.  She is a Jersey girl at heart, but now lives in the Midwest with her workaholic husband, sports obsessed son and Buddy the Wheaten Terrorist (Terrier). She is a co-founder of Romance University blog. For more information on Adrienne’s books please visit www.AdrienneGiordano.com.

Adrienne can also be found on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/AdrienneGiordanoAuthor and Twitter  http://twitter.com/AdriennGiordano.

Anne Laughlin is the author of Veritas, which won a 2010 Goldie award in the Mystery category. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies from Cleis Press, Alyson Books, Bold Strokes Books and others. Runaway, her next novel with Bold Strokes Books, will be published in March 2012.

In 2008 Anne was named an Emerging Writer Fellow by the Lambda Literary Foundation. She has been accepted into writing residencies at the Ragdale Foundation (2009) and Vermont Studio Center for the Arts (2010).

Anne lives in Chicago with her partner, Linda.

Kathleen Ernst’s Chloe Ellefson/Historic Sites mysteries are rooted in her time         as a curator at Old World Wisconsin, the historic site near Eagle.  Old World Murder (2010) and The Heirloom Murders (2011) will soon be followed by The Lightkeeper’s Legacy, set in Door County.  Kathleen’s fiction for young readers includes eight historical mysteries.  Honors for her work include Agatha and Edgar nominations, an Emmy Award, and three awards from the Council For WI Writers.  Kathleen lives and writes in Middleton, WI, but takes great pleasure in research trips to new locales!  Visit her at www.kathleenernst.com

Impressed by the kindness of her first teachers, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Sister Flynn decided to follow their example and professed vows as a School Sister of Notre Dame at the age of 20.  She graduated from Mount Mary College and holds a masters degree in theology from St. Mary’s University of San Antonio.

After 15 years of classroom teaching, she began a full-time career in spirituality, becoming a national speaker, retreat and spiritual director, archdiocesan leader of Catholic Charasmatic renewal, and later, director of adult and family ministry at the large parish where she first met Regina and David Bakula.   In June 2005, with Regina’s case ongoing, Sister retired from parish ministry to begin writing Rescuing Regina.  She also co-founded and currently chairs the Archdiocesan Justice for Immigrants Committee.

On October 25, 2011, at the invitation of Human Rights First, Sister Flynn spoke at Georgetown Law in Washington, D.C. to set the tone for a conference on asylum reform by sharing Regina’s story (Rescuing Regina).  The day-long conference, “Reaffirming Protection: Strengthening Asylum in the United States,” was sponsored by the UNHRC, Human Rights First, and Georgetown’s Human Rights Institute, in commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention. She also presented a signed copy of Rescuing Regina to the UN High Commissioner of Refugees Antonio Guterres. In the days following, she spoke to staff members of the Department of Migration and Refugee Services at the USCCB (national headquarters for the Catholic Church) and to national leaders of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC).

Sister is a well-known speaker, at ease with a variety of groups. She has addressed local teen groups as well as law students at Marquette University.

Lynne Diebel and Pat Dillon are independent writers.  Dillon formerly wrote a regional travel colum and worked in advertising in Milwaukee and Chicago.  Diebel previously taught English at Stoughton High School and is coauthor of ABCs Naturally, Paddling Northern Minnesota and Paddling Southern Minnesota.   They are coauthors of Green Travel Guide to Southern Wisconsin: Environmentally and Socially Responsible Travel. Ride your bike to a southeastern Wisconsin llama farm and learn to spin wool right off the sheep’s back. Find out where the blue heronshide in the Mississippi backwaters from an expert naturalist. The authors of Green Travel Guide to Southern Wisconsin will show you small footprint fun, with green lodgings, local fare, silent sports ,low impact events, and more.

Pat Dillon and Lynne Diebel are independent writers.  Dillon formerly wrote a regional travel colum and worked in advertising in Milwaukee and Chicago.  Diebel previously taught English at Stoughton High School and is coauthor of ABCs Naturally, Paddling Northern Minnesota and Paddling Southern Minnesota.   They are coauthors of Green Travel Guide to Southern Wisconsin: Environmentally and Socially Responsible Travel. Ride your bike to a southeastern Wisconsin llama farm and learn to spin wool right off the sheep’s back. Find out where the blue heronshide in the Mississippi backwaters from an expert naturalist. The authors of Green Travel Guide to Southern Wisconsin will show you small footprint fun, with green lodgings, local fare, silent sports,low impact events, and more.

Sarah C. Lange has been a magazine editor for 10 years, most recently at The Writer, which is dedicated to dispensing advice and inspiration for writers at every level. The magazine, owned by Kalmbach Publishing Co. in Waukesha, covers the craft and business of freelance writing, fiction writing, copywriting, screenwriting and more, and has won multiple awards for editorial excellence from Folio magazine. As the associate editor of The Writer, she assigns articles to freelance writers and works directly with them to ensure the pieces meet the needs of the publication’s national audience of published and aspiring writers. Her short articles and author interviews appear in the magazine, and she blogs about writing news and tips at writermag.com/blog.

Paula Anderson publishes Echoes, a small press hand-stitched semi-annual poetry journal. Her publishing company Durnford’s Landing has published Idlewild by Ann Arntson, also Aubade and In the First Place by Judy Kolosso.

Paula’s own poems have appeared in Icarus International, Centrifugal Eye, River Oak Review, Plainsongs, and others. She writes with the Stone Kettle Poets and wanders the moraines in Wales, WI.

M. Scott Douglass is the Publisher and Managing Editor of Main Street Rag Publishing Company founded in 1996 ( North Carolina). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and he was the recipient of a NC Arts & Science Emerging Artists Grant in 2001. His work has appeared in such places as The Asheville Poetry Review, Iodine Poetry Journal, and Southern Poetry Review (among others). His four collections of poetry include Auditioning For Heaven, Balancing On Two Wheels, STEEL WOMB Revisited and Dip Says Hi and his newest collection, Hard to Love, to be released in Fall 2011. He has taught Graphic Design at Central Piedmont Community College; his design work has earned him two PICA Awards and was nominated for a 2010 Eric Hoffer Award.

Michael Gordon is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  He teaches courses in American Labor History, the History of Wisconsin, the 1950s, and local history, and serves as the Co-Coordinator of the department’s Public History Program, which helps prepare History graduate students for careers in museums and other historical agencies. Professor Gordon earned a B.S from Northwestern University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. He has published articles on labor, public, and oral history, and helped produce a play at Milwaukee’s Theatre X on the Patrick Cudahy strike (1987-1989).  His book, The Orange Riots: Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871, was published by Cornell University Press. Prior to coming to UW-Milwaukee in 1987, Professor Gordon was an oral historian and archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Elizabeth Zanichkowsky is an Associate Professor of English at UW-Waukesha.  She will be appearing at the Festival with colleagues Margaret Rozga and Janet LaBrie to discuss the special topic Recovering Women’s Voices. This panel will present a discussion of an inclusive range of more established writers and talk about how each serves in a different way as a model of recovering women’s voices.  In addition,  LaBrie, Rozga and Zanichkowsky will talk about how these writers can serve as models for writers who may be audience members.

Somchintana is a native Thai anthropologist and business manager.  She received her graduate degrees in Medical Anthropology and Business Management in the United States.  In both fields, her geographical area of specialty is Southeast Asia.

Somchintana taught Medical Anthropology and Linguistic Anthropology at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Thailand.  She also taught Indonesian language at Thammasat and Chulalongkorn Universities in Thailand.  Her academic publications are in both Thai and English.  Presently she is doing her Medical Anthropology research and teaching Thai and Cooking Courses at University of Wisconsin-Waukesha.  She also runs her own catering and bakery business.

Michael A. Black graduated from Columbia College, Chicago in 2000 with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Fiction Writing.  He previously earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Northern Illinois Univeristy.  Despite his literary leanings, he has often said that police work has been his life.  A former Army Military Policman, he entered civilian law enforcement after his discharge, and for the past twenty-seven years has been a polic officer in the south suburbs of Chicago.

The author of over forty articles on subjects ranging from police work to popular fiction, he has also had over thirty short stories published in various anthologies and magazines, including Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.  His first novel, A Killing Frost, featuring private investigator Ron Shade was published by Five Star in September 2002, with endorsements from such respected authors as Sara Paretsky and Andrew Vachss.  The novel received universally excellent reviews and was subsequently release in trade paperback. Other titles include:  Hostile Takeover, I Am Not A Psychic (with Richard Belzer), Windy City Knights and Random Victim.  www.michaelablack.com  

During a 40-year journalism career, Hofmann has covered every major Wisconsin sport as well as numerous national and international events ranging from the Olympics and the Super Bowl to the Final Four, the World Series and the US Open golf tournament. He was a Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Bucks beat reporter before becoming a columnist for the Milwaukee Sentinel and later the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A member of the Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame, he was named one of the nation’s top ten sports columnists in 1998, and he has won a number of other state and national writing awards including one for a series filed from Saudi Arabia leading up to Desert Storm.

Agatha, Anthony and Macavity winning investigative reporter Hank Phillippi Ryan is on the air at Boston’s NBC affiliate. She’s won 26 EMMYs and dozens of other journalism honors.  Her debut, PRIME TIME, won the Agatha. FACE TIME is a BookSense Notable Book; AIR TIME an AGATHA and ANTHONY nominee. Her latest, DRIVE TIME , is an Anthony, Agatha and Daphne nominee. Hank’s story “On the House” won the AGATHA, ANTHONY and MACAVITY. On the NE board of SinC and national of MWA.   www.HankPhillippiRyan.com

David Thome has written 20 screenplays. Four of them were optioned by companies in Hollywood and elsewhere–one of them twice–without his ever moving from Wisconsin.   Past President of the Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum, recognitions include  scripts which reached the semifinals of the Slamdance Screenplay Competition and the Maui Screenwriting award.

He is currently work on a romance novel and  blogs the details of his experience and “the lessons I’m learning as a man writing for a female audience.”  The blog has regular readers all over the U.S., plus Canada, Germany, Russia and the Netherlands.   http://manwritingaromance.blogspot.com/

Fred Schepartz writes science fiction, fantasy and horror. He has one published novel, Vampire Cabbie. He recently completed his next novel, Guitar God and just started yet another, Solidarity Moon. Fred also publishes and edits Mobius: The Journal of Social Change.

Matt acts as the “Editor-in-Chief” of FlamesRising.com, a Horror & Dark Fantasy Webzine. Matt’s other work is a mix of writing and editing in both fiction and games. Recently he worked as the editor of the Little Fears Nightmare Edition RPG from FunSizedGames. He was the editor of the Buried Tales of Pinebox, Texas anthology for 12 to Midnight. Other projects include the Ghostories RPG for Precis Intermedia and a novella in the Tales of the Seven Dogs Society from Abstract Nova Entertainment.

John Klima previously worked at Asimov’s, Analog, and Tor Books before returning to school to earn his Master’s in Library and Information Science. He now works full time as a librarian. When he is not conquering the world of indexing, John edits and publishes the Hugo Award-winning genre zine Electric Velocipede. As of 2010, the magazine has also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award four years in a row. In 2007, Klima edited an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories based on spelling-bee winning words called Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories. In 2011, Klima edited an anthology of retellings of fairytales for Night Shade Books. He and his family live in the Midwest.

Swati Avasthi has a BA from The University of Chicago and an MFA from The University of Minnesota.  Her first novel, SPLIT, received the International Reading Association’s Young Adult Award, a CYBILS Award, and a Silver Parent’s Choice Award.  It was included on YALSA’s a Best Fiction for Young Adults in 2011 and is being translated into three languages.  In other words, Swati’s feet haven’t touched the ground since it was released.  Her second novel, CHASING SHADOWS, is due out from Knopf in 2012 and please visit her at www.swatiavasthi.com

RAYMOND BENSON is the author of 25 published books.  He wrote six original James Bond novels, three film novelizations, and three short stories—all published worldwide.  Three 007 titles each are collected in the recent anthologies CHOICE OF WEAPONS and THE UNION TRILOGY.  His series of “rock ‘n’ roll thrillers” include DARK SIDE OF THE MORGUE and A HARD DAY’S DEATH.  As “David Michaels” Raymond wrote two NY Times best-sellers in TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL series.  Raymond is also the author of two METAL GEAR SOLID novelizations and the recent HOMEFRONT—THE VOICE OF FREEDOM (co-written with John Milius). This September brings the first entry of a new series called THE BLACK STILETTO—check out the promo video at www.theblackstiletto.net!  Visit Raymond at www.raymondbenson.com

James Lowder has worked extensively on both sides of the editorial blotter. His publications include the bestselling, widely translated dark fantasy novels Prince of Lies and Knight of the Black Rose, short fiction for such anthologies as Shadows Over Baker Street and The Repentant, and comic book scripts for DC, Devil’s Due, and Moonstone. He’s written hundreds of feature articles, columns, film reviews, and book reviews for publications ranging from Amazing Stories and The Comics Journal to Milwaukee Magazine and The New England Journal of History. As an editor, Lowder has directed book lines or series for both large and small houses, and has helmed more than a dozen critically acclaimed anthologies, including Curse of the Full Moon, Hobby Games: The 100 Best, and the upcoming Triumph of the Walking Dead. His work has received five Origins Awards and an ENnie Award, and been nominated for the International Horror Guild Award and the Stoker Award. He can be found online at www.jameslowder.com

Photo By Scott Payne

Kevin Guilfoile is the bestselling author of Cast of Shadows, which was named one of the Best Books of 2005 by the Chicago Tribune, and The Thousand, which the New York Times called “original and gripping” and Entertainment Weekly dubbed a “must read.” His novels have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Ken Miyamoto interned with director Randall Kleiser (Grease), worked as a studio liaison at Sony Studios, and then as a studio script reader/story analyst for Sony as well, before leaving to take on his own writing career.  He is currently a represented and working screenwriter.  He’s had a development deal with Lions Gate films, meetings with nearly all major studios, studio writing assignments, and recently visited the set of his upcoming miniseries which is now in post production, Blackout, starring Anne Heche, Eric LaSalle, Sean Patrick Flanery, Brian Bloom, James Brolin, Haylie Duff, Bruce Boxleitner, etc.  Ken relocated back to Wisconsin to raise his family close to home and flies back to L.A. on business when needed.  He is also the president of the Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum (www.wiscreenwritersforum.org), a non profit support group for screenwriters worldwide.

Alex Bledsoe grew up in West Tennessee an hour north of Graceland (home of Elvis) and twenty minutes from Nutbush (birthplace of Tina Turner). He now lives in a century-old yellow house in a Wisconsin town famous for trolls.  His books include Dark Jenny, Burn Me Deadly and The Girls with Games of Blood.

Photo by Kaity Ryan

Carol Sklenicka’s biography of short story writer and poet Raymond Carver, Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life, was named one of the Best 10 Books of 2009 by the New York Times Book Review. A former instructor at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Marquette University, she now resides in northern California where she is writing a biography of Alice Adams.

Mike Drew has won prestigious writing awards and was recently inducted into the Millwaukee Press Club Media Hall of Fame. He has written a nationally syndicated column, taught and lectured widely and led two national associations of newspaper critics and columnists. As a Milwaukee Journal theater critic, he visited London and, annually Broadway, where he reviewed, reported and interviewed.  While reviewing films, he traveled widely for interviews with actors, producers and directors. His 31 years as Journal television critic and columnist included six weeks each year in Los Angeles and New York to report on that industry.

He just concluded a media column for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which ran, in various forms, for 43 years.

As a longtime music critic Drew  now contributes Journal Sentinel reviews and interviews in the jazz and classic pop areas. Married, he lives in Shorewood, Wi., not far from his two children and three of his five grandchildren, He writes, edits and lectures, escorts authors, serves on several nonprofit boards and volunteers extensively.

For recreation, he reads, seeks out jazz, races his sailboat, plays tennis, golf, swims, practices yoga and bicycles.

Roman Author Aulus Gellius

Dr. Stephen M. Beall is an Associate Professor of Classics at Marquette University.  He earned his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988. He has published articles on the theory and practice of translation in Roman Antiquity and on modern translations of the Latin liturgy of the Catholic Church. He translated a Latin commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics by Peter Martyr Vermigli, a 16^th-century Protestant philosopher and theologian. He is currently preparing a Latin and English text of the Libellus of Paolo Giustiniani, a Camadolese monk and reformer of the 15^th century.

Suzanne Alexander, MD, has lived in Madison for over twenty-five years. After working many years as a general internist, she decided to focus on her family and writing. In addition to seeing her teenagers off to college, she is working on a growing collection of short stories and a novel. She is the director of Madison’s book club for the poor and homeless, and blogs about it at www.streetsofmadison.blogspot.com.

Douglas W. Jacobson is an engineer, business owner and World War Two history enthusiast who has traveled extensively in Europe researching stories of the courage of common people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. His debut novel, Night of Flames: A Novel of World War Two, won the 2008 “Outstanding Achievement Award” from the Wisconsin Library Association. Doug writes a monthly column on Poland’s experience during WW2, and has published articles on European resistance and escape organizations during the war. Doug’s second historical novel, The Katyn Order, is a story of intrigue and danger, of love and human courage in the aftermath of one of history’s most notorious war crimes.

Robert Grede, BA, MBA, is a graduate of DePauw University and The Emory University School of Business.

Grede has been on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Carroll College, and Marquette University, a syndicated columnist and frequent contributor to magazines, and has authored the best selling Naked Marketing – The Bare Essentials and several other books on marketing and strategic planning.

He recently published his first novel, The Spur & The Sash, a true story of love, passion, and betrayal amid the anarchy of Middle Tennessee in the aftermath of the American Civil War.

Books

Naked Marketing – The Bare Essentials [Prentice Hall, 1997]
Naked Marketing – The Bare Essentials, 2^nd Ed. [Marquette University Press, 2005]
The 5 Kick-Ass Strategies (Every Business Needs) [SourceBooks, 2006]
The Spur & The Sash – A Novel [Three Towers Press, 2010]

Michael is the author of three critically acclaimed crime novels, The Chicago Way, The Fifth Floor and The Third Rail. His fourth novel, We All Fall Down, will be published by Knopf in the summer of 2011. Michael is also a documentary producer and co-creator, producer and executive producer of A&E’s groundbreaking forensic series, Cold Case Files.

Michael’s investigative journalism and documentary work has won multiple Emmys and CableACE awards, numerous national and international film festival awards, as well as an Academy Award nomination.

Michael holds a law degree with honors from Duke University, a masters degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a bachelors degree, magna cum laude, in classical languages from Holy Cross College.

Michael was born in Boston and lives in Chicago. He owns an Irish bar in Chicago, The Hidden Shamrock.

Dr. Craig W. Hurst has been a member of the UW-Waukesha faculty since January 1993.  In addition to his teaching duties, he also serves as Chair of the UW Colleges Music Department.  Hurst enjoys music of all genres, reading, cooking, bird watching, and professional football and baseball.

Dr. Phil Zweifel began teaching English at UW-Waukesha in 1976, and since 1995 he has also served as Associate Campus Dean.  His special interests include poetry, creative writing, the works of Mark Twain, golf, and the music of Bob Dylan.

Susan Masino is the author of Let There Be Rock -The Story of AC/DC, which is now published in ten languages. Susan has been a rock journalist for over thirty years. She also teaches a continuing education program on the History of Rock and Roll for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Susan appears in the Van Halen DVD, The Early Years. For interview and review requests, please contact Wes Seeley at wseeley@halleonard.com.

Robin L. Flanigan is an award-winning freelance writer whose work has appeared internationally. She lives with her husband and daughter in Rochester, New York, where she finds peace in practicing her personal mantra: Know what you want. Work hard to get it. Accept what comes next. (www.thekineticpen.com)

Amaud Jamaul Johnson’s first collection of poetry, Red Summer (Tupelo 2006), was selected by Carl Phillips as winner of the 2005 Dorset Prize. Educated at Howard University and Cornell University, his honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, a Robert Frost Fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and three Pushcart nominations. His work has been published in New England Review, VQR, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Indiana Review, Quarterly West, Eleven Eleven, and elsewhere.  He is currently an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin Public Radio’s Distinguished Senior Broadcaster, is host and executive producer of Here on Earth: Radio without Borders.  Feraca has received several honors including  the Nation’s Discovery Award and two Hopwood Awards.  Recipient of an Ohio State and Gabriel Award for her Women of Spirit radio series on female leaders in the early Christian Church, she also received the National Telemedia Council’s Distinguished Media Award for her radio advocacy of people with mental illness.  She is author of three collections of poetry South From Rome:  Il Mezzgiorno, Crossing the Great Divide; and Rendered into Paradise.  Her newest publication is I Hear Voices:  A Memoir of Love, Death and Radio.

Amanda Barnett has been in the publishing industry in one guise or another for over a decade.   The various hats she’s worn have been book reviewer, columnist, editor, public relations, published author and senior editor. She has been on the executive board for The Wild Rose Press since July of 2008 and with the company since 2007.  If there’s one thing she truly hates to see in a manuscript it’s head-hopping She loves to read romance just like a regular reader, and when it
comes to her personal take me away books, Amanda has several shelves of favorites in her home in the South.

Susan Elbe is the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press), which won Honorable Mention for the 2007 Council for Wisconsin Writers Posner Poetry Book Award, and a chapbook, Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including Blackbird, diode, MARGIE, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Salt Hill, A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-five Years of Women’s Poetry (Calyx Books), and On Retirement: 75 Poems (University of Iowa Press). Among her awards are the inaugural Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize (Calyx), the Council for Wisconsin Writers Lorine Niedecker Award, Third Place in the Poetry Center of Chicago’s 14^th Annual Juried Reading, and fellowships to Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can learn more about her at www.susanelbe.com.

Swimming in the Daylight: An American Student, a Soviet-Jewish Dissident, and the Gift of Hope is the story of the improbable friendship between Lisa Paul, an American college student, strong in her Catholic faith, and Inna Kitrosskaya Meiman, a Soviet-Jewish dissident, which takes place in the repressive 1980s Moscow, just before Soviet Union came apart at the seems.

Swimming in the Daylight has received a positive review from Booklist Review and has been recommended by Anne Garrels of National Public Radio. Ms. Paul has been featured on MPTV’s I remember Milwaukee and has been interviewed by Jean Feraca on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Here on Earth.

Raised in Appleton, Ms. Paul lived in Moscow from 1983-1985. After obtaining a Russian Studies degree from the University of Minnesota in 1986, she worked for two organizations committed to improving U.S.-Soviet relations. She then attended Marquette University Law School and is now a civil litigation attorney in Milwaukee, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.

Libby Fischer Hellmann, an award-winning crime fiction author, has published seven novels. Her most recent, SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE, is a stand-alone thriller, goes back, in part, to the late Sixties in Chicago. She also writes two crime fiction series. The first, which includes the hard-boiled EASY INNOCENCE (2008) and DOUBLEBACK (2009,) features Chicago P.I Georgia Davis. In addition there are four novels in the Ellie Foreman series, which Libby describes as a cross between “Desperate Housewives” and “24.”  Libby has also published over 15 short stories in NICE GIRL DOES NOIR and has edited the acclaimed crime fiction anthology, CHICAGO BLUES. She has been nominated twice for the Anthony Award, and once for the Agatha. Originally from Washington DC, she has lived in Chicago for 30 years and claims they’ll take her out of there feet first. More at her website: www.libbyhellmann.com

Peter Geye received his MFA from the University of New Orleans and his PHD from Western Michigan University, where he was editor of Third Coast. He was born and raised in Minneapolis and continues to live there with his wife and three children.  Safe From the Sea is his first novel.

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. She is the inimitable creator behind Ernie Pook’s Comeek, the seminal comic strip that was syndicated scross North America in alternative weeklies for two decades. She is the author of the books One! Hundred! Demons!, The! Greatest! of! Marlys!, Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies!, and The Good Times are Killing Me. She invented a genre with the bestselling and acclaimed creative how to-graphic novels What It Is (for which she received Eisner and R.R. Donnelly awards) and Picture This.

What It Is and Picture This are based on Barry’s workshop “Writing the Unthinkable” which is a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or remember. Lynda explores the depths of the inner and outer realms of creation and imagination, where play can be serious, monsters have purpose, and not knowing is an answer unto itself. Barry currently offers her workshop “Writing the Unthinkable” all over the place.

Born in Wisconsin in 1956, Lynda studied at Evergreen State College.

After being an “at-home” mom and attending college part-time until she graduated, Alice pursued her career at the University of Wisconsin. Twenty years later she retired from her position as senior editor and publications director at the La Follette School of Public Affairs. In retirement she leads writing workshops for adults and serves in a number of volunteer capacities. In her spare time, she pedals the scenic roads of southern Wisconsin and plans tours on other parts of the continent.

Each year for the last 28, Alice has spent one week of her summer vacation on a bicycle tour, always somewhere in North America. Following retirement, she was thrilled to realize her long-time dream of pedaling across America. The book she and co-author Bobbi Montgomery wrote about that adventure is now available through Terrace Books, the trade division of the University of Wisconsin Press or online from Amazon. Visit them at www.AliceandBobbi.com.

Clare O’Donohue is the author of MISSING PERSONS, the first in the Kate Conway Mysteries, as well as three Someday Quilts Mysteries (THE LOVERS KNOT, A DRUNKARD’S PATH & THE DOUBLE CROSS.  Clare began her writing career as a newspaper reporter for a small weekly paper outside Joliet, Illinois. She covered everything from school board meetings to murder trials, and wrote a weekly column. For the last thirteen years she has worked in television, writing and producing for shows on HGTV, truTV, The History Channel, Food Network, A&E and others. She continues to work as a producer and lives in Chicago, IL.

Stephanie Kuehnert got her start writing bad poetry about unrequited love and razor blades in eighth grade. In high school, she discovered punk rock and produced several DIY feminist ‘zines. Stephanie received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago and was named to Newcity’s Lit 50 in 2008. Her debut young adult novel, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone, a raw, edgy emotional tale about growing up punk and living to tell, is titled after a Sleater-Kinney song and was published by MTV Books in July 2008. Stephanie’s second book, Ballads of Suburbia, published by MTV Books in July 2009, is set in her hometown of Oak Park, Illinois, and has been called “an intensely real and painfully honest novel of high-school anxiety” by Booklist. Stephanie is also an award-winning columnist for the Forest Park Review. She currently lives, works, and writes in Forest Park, IL and you can find her online at www.stephaniekuehnert.com.

David Mulroy holds a BA from Georgetown and a PhD in Classics from Stanford.  He is now a professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he has worked since 1973.  He has published four books of translations of ancient Greek and Latin Poetry, Early Greek Lyric Poetry (Michigan 1992), Horace’s Odes and Epodes (Michigan 1994), The Complete Poetry of Catullus (Wisconsin 2002), and most recently Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (Wisconsin 2011).  His work on contemporary education, The War Against Grammar (Heinemann-Boynton/Cook) appeared in 2003.  His hobbies are working out and playing softball.  He is married with two children and two granddaughters.

Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli is a writer who writes—constantly.  She is a book reviewer with the alternative newspaper, The Northern Express, in Traverse City, Michigan.

Her short stories have appeared in many journals.  She has had essays turned into stage pieces and performed.  Her first mystery novel, Gift of Evil, was published by Bantam. Her novels Dead, Dancing Women; Dead Floating Lovers; Dead Sleeping Shamam, from Midnight Ink, are in bookstores now.  Another in the Emily Kincaid mystery series: Dead Dogs and Englishmen, recently given a starred Kirkus review, will be out this July.

Hallie Ephron’s new suspense novel “Come and Find Me,” from William Morrow, follows her “Never Tell a Lie” which was a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and for the Salt Lake Libraries Readers Choice Award, and won the David Award for best mystery of 2009. It was made into the movie “And Baby Will Fall” for the Lifetime Movie Network. A book lover, Hallie is also the author of “The Bibliophile’s Devotional” and “1001 Books for Every Mood,” and reviews crime fiction for the “Boston Globe.”  Her  “Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel” was an Edgar Award finalist.

Editor and award-winning author J.R. Turner is a huge fan of all things fun and thrilling. She gets a kick out of surprising her kids and loves to tell goofy jokes—that aren’t always funny. She lives in Wisconsin, a state known for cheese, bratwurst, and beer—and 1001 recipes for Cheesy Bratwurst Beer Soup. Between writing and editing books, enjoying the outdoors, cooking exotic recipes like Kitty Litter Cake, and trying her hand at all types of arts and crafts, her life is one adventure after another.  Visit http://www.jennifer-turner.com to learn more.

Wayne Breitbarth is co-owner and co-president of M&M Office Interiors in Pewaukee, Wisconsin.  Prior to his involvement in the office furniture business, he spent nearly twenty years in the automotive industry.  He received his BBA from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and his MBA from Marquette University.  Wayne is also a Certified Public Accountant and spent the early years of his career as an auditor and small business consultant with Arthur Andersen & Co.

Throughout his career, Wayne has been involved with a number of philanthropic organizations including  serving on the board of directors for Make A Difference-Wisconsin and Community Warehouse, a nonprofit organization that serves the Milwaukee community by providing affordable home and facility improvement materials.  He is a member of the Milwaukee Area Technical College’s Accounting Careers Advisory Board and has served as a youth leader and teacher at Eastbrook Church in Milwaukee.

Wayne’s work with urban youth has been applauded by the Wisconsin Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and he proudly accepted the 2009 WICPA Public Service Award.

Wayne began moonlighting as a LinkedIn trainer in early 2009 and has now led seminars for over 10,000 business professionals.  He has inspired audiences both locally, at many of Milwaukee’s most prominent companies and organizations, and nationally, at conventions, industry association events, and corporate training sessions.  Wayne’s diverse business experience, pragmatic teaching style, and infectious sense of humor have earned him the praise of the press and the distinction of being referred to as the “LinkedIn Guru.”  His book, “The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success:  Kick-Start Your Business, Brand and Job Search,” published by the Greenleaf Book Group, will be available in book stores in March 2011.

Wayne resides in Mequon, Wisconsin with his wife of 30 years.  They have three daughters.