Kate Alcott • Amanda Bennett • Chris Bohjalian • Ken Budd • Arun Chaudhary •
Michael Collier • Ellen Cromwell • Rachel S. Cox • David DeVorkin • Elyse Harrison •
Caitlin Horrocks • Nicole Idar • Miranda Kenneally • Diane Kidd • Thomas Mallon •
David Maraniss • Alice McDermott • Robert W. Merry • Liza Mundy • Valerie O. Patterson •
Lynn Povich • John Radner • Jill Smokler • Desiree J. Sterbini • Susan Stockdale •
Margaret A. Weitekamp • |
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Kate Alcott is the New York Times bestselling author of The Dressmaker, a book that NPR’s “All Things Considered” says “offers a heroine you can really root for.” Alcott is a journalist who has covered politics in Washington, D.C., where she currently lives.
Click here to read an interview with Kate Alcott.
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 Amanda Bennett is Executive Editor/Projects and Investigations for Bloomberg News. She served as a Wall Street Journal reporter for more than 20 years. She was elected co-Chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2010, and was a member of the board since 2002. In 1997 Bennett shared the Prize for national reporting with her Journal colleagues, and in 2001 during her tenure at The Oregonian, that paper won a Pulitzer for public service. Projects by the Bloomberg P&I team won a 2008 Loeb Award and a 2009 Overseas Press Club Award; several awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers; a 2010 and 2011 George Polk Award and a 2010 National Headliner Award. She won a Loeb Award in 2010 for the article that formed the basis of The Cost of Hope.
In addition to The Cost of Hope, she is the author of five books including In Memoriam (1998), co-authored with Terence B. Foley; The Man Who Stayed Behind co-authored with Sidney Rittenberg (1993), and Death of the Organization Man (1991).
She is a member of The Pennsylvania Women’s Forum. She is on the board of the American Society of News Editors, and is on the board of directors of the Temple University Press, the Loeb Awards and of the Rosenbach Museum, a Philadelphia museum of rare books.
Click here to read an interview with Amanda Bennett.
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Chris Bohjalian has called The Sandcastle Girls the most important book he will ever write. Published in July to great acclaim, this story of the Armenian Genocide debuted at #7 on the New York Times bestseller list, and appeared as well on the Publishers’ Weekly, USA Today, and national Independent Bookstore bestseller lists. It was also a Washington Post, Library Journal, a Kirkus Reviews, and aBookPage "Best Book" of 2012.
He is the author of fifteen books, including the other New York Times bestsellers, The Night Strangers, Secrets of Eden, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, Before Your Know Kindness and Midwives. His novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. His work had been translated into over 25 languages and three times become movies (Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers).
He has written for a wide variety of magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and has been a columnist for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since 1992. Chris graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
Click here to read an interview with Chris Bohjalian.
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Image Credit: Victoria Blewer
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 Ken Budd is the author of The Voluntourist—A Six-Country Tale of Love, Loss, Fatherhood, Fate, and Singing Bon Jovi in Bethlehem. The memoir tells the story of Ken's efforts to overcome the death of his father and answer questions about life by volunteering in New Orleans, Costa Rica, China, Ecuador, Palestine, and Kenya. Ken has written for The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Huffington Post, McSweeney’s, AARP The Magazine, Worldview, and many more publications and web sites. He has made nearly 100 appearances on TV and radio, including NBC’s “Today,” “CBS This Morning,” “ABC News Now”, CBS’s “The Early Show”, CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” and Martha Stewart Living Radio. Ken and his wife live in Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C.
Click here to read an interview with Ken Budd.
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Arun Chaudhary served as the first official White House videographer from 2009 to 2011 and was also a key member of Obama's new media team during the 2008 campaign. He previously worked in film in New York and was a member of the NYU Graduate Film Department faculty. He received his MFA in filmmaking from NYU and his BA in film theory from Cornell University. Chaudhary has been profiled by The New York Times, the BBC, National Journal, Politico, Fortune, and many political websites. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his family.
Click here to read an interview with Arun Chaudhary.
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Image Credit: Lawrence Jackson |
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Former Maryland Poet Laureate, Michael Collier is also the director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Maryland. His books of poetry include The Clasp and Other Poems, The Folded Heart, The Neighbor, The Ledge, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Dark Wild Realm. Collier is the editor of two acclaimed anthologies of poetry, The Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of American Poetry and The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology, and a translation of Medea. He is also the author of a collection of essays, Make Us Wave Back.
Michael Collier has received numerous awards for his poetry, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, an Academy Award in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, the Thomas Watson Fellowship, and a “Discovery”/The Nation award. He lives in Maryland.
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 Rachel S. Cox writes regularly for The Washington Post and CQ Researcher. Her articles have appeared in AARP Bulletin, Preservation, Landscape Architecture and other national magazines. She was formerly an editor of Preservation magazine, and as a writer/editor at Time-Life Books, she wrote for the Fighting Jets and Civil War series. A resident of Washington, D.C., she holds a BA cum laude in English from Harvard. Inspired by the experience of her uncle Rob Cox, Into Dust and Fire is her first book.
Click here to read an interview with Rachel Cox. |
Ellen S. Cromwell, author of the books Splash Puddle Splash and Wiggle-Dee-Dee, is the founder of the Georgetown Hill Early Schools in Montgomery County, MD and has been an educator of young children since the 1970s. She is the author of three early childhood professional texts including Nurturing Readiness in Early Childhood Education. Her most recent book, Are You Listening Potbelly? was illustrated by Desiree J. Sterbini.
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Dr. David DeVorkin is senior curator of history of astronomy and the space sciences at the National Air and Space Museum. He is the author/editor/compiler of nine books and more than 100 scholarly and popular articles. Dr. Devorkin holds a Ph.D. in the history of astronomy from the University of Leicester and a Master of philosophy in astronomy from Yale University. He is the author of Pluto’s Secret: An Icy World’s Tale of Discovery, written with Margaret A. Weitekamp and illustrated by Diane Kidd.
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| A fascination with mechanical toys, book illustration, object design, textiles and language arts originated in Elyse Harrison’s childhood and remains influential to her work today. She is the owner of Studio Neptune, founded in 1990, a fine art education program for children, and the former owner of Gallery Neptune, which showcased regional art from 2003 – 2010 in downtown Bethesda.
Painted Fables is Elyse Harrison’s first book for children ages 7-12. Her exhibit of paintings from the book was made possible by a generous grant from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, Maryland.
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Caitlin Horrocks is the author of the story collection, This Is Not Your City. Her stories and essays appear in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories 2011, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009, The Pushcart Prize XXXV, The Paris Review, Tin House, One Story and elsewhere. Her work has won awards including the Plimpton Prize, and fellowships to the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. She was formerly the 2006-2007 Theresa A. Wilhoit Fellow at Arizona State University. Currently, she is an assistant professor of writing at Grand Valley State University and the fiction editor of The Kenyon Review. She is recipient of The Writer’s Center’s Emerging Writer’s Fellowship.
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| Nicole Idar’s stories have appeared in World Literature Today, Rattapallax, and The New Ohio Review, where she was as a finalist for the 2009 Fiction Prize. Her first published essay, “Refrain from Being a Totally 100% Bookworm,” won a 2012 Bethesda Magazine award. She holds an MFA in Fiction from George Mason University and a bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard University. She was an Associate Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida in 2012, and she is recipient of The Writer’s Center’s Undiscovered Voices Fellowship.
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 Miranda Kenneally isn’t afraid to take on all the hot-button issues of modern teen life. She is the author of Catching Jordan, Stealing Parker and her new novel, Things I Can’t Forget, and is the co-creator of the website DearTeenMe.com. Miranda also writes and works for the State Department in Washington, D.C., where George W. Bush once used her shoulder as an armrest.
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| Diane Kidd is the Manager of the Flights of Fancy Early Childhood Program at the National Air and Space Museum. She has a Masters degree from Bank Street College of Education in Early Childhood Education and Museum Leadership and a BFA in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute. She has more than twenty years experience working in a museum environment.
Kidd is also a professional children's book illustrator. Her book Weird Stories from the Lonesome Café won the Parent's Guide to Children's Media Award, the Beverly Cleary Award and the Nevada Young Reader's Award 2002. She has illustrated numerous educational and trade publications for companies that include Scholastic, McGraw Hill, Black Enterprise, Richard Sanka Animation: Sony, Children's Television Network, Postal Museum and the Brooklyn Children's Museum. She most recently illustrated Pluto’s Secret: An Icy World’s Tale of Discovery, written by Margaret A. Weitekamp and David DeVorkin.
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Thomas Mallon’s eight books of fiction include Henry and Clara, Bandbox, Fellow Travelers and the recently published Watergate: A Novel. He has also written volumes of nonfiction about plagiarism, Stolen Words; diaries, A Book of One’s Own; letters, Yours Ever; and the Kennedy assassination, Mrs. Paine’s Garage; as well as two books of essays, Rockets and Rodeos and In Fact. His work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review and other publications.
Mallon received his Ph. D. in English and American Literature from Harvard University and taught for a number of years at Vassar College. His honors include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, the National Book Critics Circle citation for reviewing, and the Vursell prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, for distinguished prose style. He has been literary editor of Gentlemen’s Quarterly and deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He currently directs the Creative Writing program at The George Washington University in Washington, D. C.
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Image Credit: William Bodenschatz
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Image Credit: Linda Maraniss
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David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post. In addition to Barack Obama: The Story, Maraniss is the author of five critically acclaimed and bestselling books, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi; First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton; They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967; Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero; and Rome 1960: The Summer Olympics That Stirred the World. He is also the author of Into the Story, The Clinton Enigma, and coauthor of The Prince of Tennessee: Al Gore Meets His Fate and Tell Newt to Shut Up!
Maraniss is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Pulitzer for national reporting in 1993 for his newspaper coverage of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton. He also was part of The Washington Post team that won a 2008 Pulitzer for the newspaper’s coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting. He has won several other notable awards for achievements in journalism, including the George Polk Award, Dirksen Award for Congressional Reporting, ASNE Laventhol Prize for Deadline Writing, Hancock Prize for Financial Writing, Anthony Lukas Book Prize, Frankfort Book Prize, Eagleton Book Prize, Ambassador Book Prize and Latino Book Prize.
Click here to read an interview with David Maraniss.
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 A National Book Award winner and three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize,
Alice McDermott is the author of six novels. Her latest novel, After This, was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize, a nominee for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was named a best book of the year by The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, The Boston Globe, among others.
Her fifth novel, Child of My Heart, was a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, one of Book Magazine’s Ten Best Novels of 2002 and also a nominee for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her fourth novel, Charming Billy received the 1998 National Book Award for fiction, the American Book Award, and was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. A stage adaptation premiered in 2011 at The Round House Theater in Bethesda, MD. Her third novel, At Weddings and Wakes, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her second, That Night, was nominated for the National Book Award, The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, The PEN/Faulkner Award and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A film version of the novel was produced by Warner Brothers in 1992.
Her articles, reviews and stories have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post, USA Today, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Redbook, Ms, Commonweal and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, the 2008 Corrington Award for Literature, and the 2010 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award. She lives with her family in Bethesda, Maryland.
Click here to read an interview with Alice McDermott.
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 Robert W. Merry is editor of The National Interest, a foreign policy journal published by the Center for the National Interest, a Washington think tank dedicated to fostering discourse on American foreign policy. As editor, Merry writes frequently on both foreign and domestic policy for the organization’s website, nationalinterest.org. Before joining The National Interest in September 2011, he spent 37 years in Washington as governmental reporter, publishing executive, and author.
Merry is the author of four books, including the recently released Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians (Simon & Schuster). His recent broadcast appearances include MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Fox’s “Fox and Friends,” “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” the “PBS NewsHour” and NPR’s “State of the Nation.” Merry has twice served as a Pulitzer Prize juror and is a member of Washington’s prestigious Cosmos Club. The father of three, he lives with his wife in McLean, Virginia.
Click here to read an interview with Robert Merry.
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Liza Mundy is an award-winning reporter and New York Times bestselling author of three books, including Michelle, a biography of First Lady Michelle Obama, which was translated into 16 languages. Her new book, The Richer Sex, explores the forces behind women’s rising economic power and the way this impacts marriage, dating, sex and family life. Her book was adapted for the cover of Time magazine and inspired a flurry of media coverage.
She has appeared on “The Colbert Report,” NBC’s “The Today Show,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “CBS This Morning,” MSNBC, CNN, C-Span, Fox News, Democracy Now, Bloggingheads TV, the “Leonard Lopate Show,” and National Public Radio shows including “Weekend Edition,” “All Things Considered,” the “Diane Rehm Show,” “Fresh Air with Terry Gross,” “Tell Me More,” “Talk of the Nation,” “On Point,” and numerous other television and radio shows. A longtime reporter for The Washington Post, she is currently a fellow at the New America Foundation, she has written for Slate, Time, the Guardian, the Washington Monthly, Huffington Post, and Lingua Franca, among others, and has received fellowships from the Japan Society, the Marine Biological Laboratory, and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
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Image Credit: Sam Kittner
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Valerie O. Patterson graduated in May 2008 with an MFA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University, where she twice received the Shirley Henn Award for Creative Scholarship. She has also received a Work-in-Progress grant from the Society of Children’s Bookwriters and Illustrators (SCBWI). In addition to SCBWI, she is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Women’s National Book Association, and the Authors Guild. Her new book for teens, Operation Oleander, brings young readers inside the lives of military children and their families. Patterson is an attorney in her day job and lives with her husband in Leesburg, Virginia.
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| Lynn Povich is an award-winning journalist who has spent more than 40 years in the news business. After graduating from Vassar, she began her career as a secretary in the Paris Bureau of Newsweek magazine, rising to become a reporter and writer in New York. In 1970, she was one of 46 women who sued the magazine for sex discrimination, the first women in the media to sue. Five years later, she was appointed the first woman Senior Editor in Newsweek’s history. Lynn has written The Good Girls Revolt, a book about that landmark lawsuit, its bittersweet impact on the women involved and what has--and hasn't changed.
Since leaving Newsweek in 1991, Povich has been editor-in-chief of Working Woman, managing editor and senior executive producer for MSNBC.com, and a consultant to The New York Times Foundation. A recipient of the Matrix Award for Magazines, Lynn serves on the Advisory Boards of the International Women's Media Foundation and the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. A native of Washington, D.C., Povich now lives in New York.
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Image Credit: Christian Steiner
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 John Radner grew up in Chevy Chase, received his B.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard, and taught at Harvard and Georgetown before joining the English Department at George Mason University in 1974. His publications include articles on Swift, Johnson, Boswell, and “The Art of Sympathy in Eighteenth-Century British Moral Thought,” and he edited (with Theodore E. Braun) a collection of articles on Death and Dying in the Early Modern Era, and another on The Lisbon earthquake of 1755: Representations and Reactions. He retired in 2007 to work fulltime on Johnson and Boswell: A Biography of Friendship.
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 Jill Smokler is a New York Times bestselling author and domestic satirist whose candor about marriage and parenting has made her an unlikely hero among a new generation of women. She blogs about motherhood — the good, the bad and the scary — at scarymommy.com. Her honesty has appeared on CNN, ABC’s “Good Morning America,” NBC’s “The Today Show,” Huffington Post and more. Her first book, Confessions of a Scary Mommy, hit The New York Times bestsellers list its first week out and her next book, Motherhood Comes Naturally (And Other Vicious Lies) is due out in April 2013. She holds a degree in graphic design and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis and has three children. Married to her college sweetheart, she and her family live in downtown Baltimore.
Click here to read an interview with Jill Smokler.
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| Desiree J. Sterbini, illustrator of Are You Listening Potbelly? and Splash Puddle Splash, is a North Carolina-born artist, who layers oil pastels and colored pencils to create award winning works, often with the theme of the innocence of childhood. Sterbini resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband Paul and her inspiration, daughter Mia.
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Susan Stockdale is an author and illustrator of children’s picture books that  celebrate the natural world with exuberance and charm. Her books have won awards from many organizations including the American Library Association, Parents’ Choice and the National Science Teachers Association. Her animal imagery is also featured on puzzles, coloring books, notecards and other products sold worldwide.
Stockdale’s newest title is Stripes of All Types, which explores the many ways in which animals around the world wear their stripes. She lives with her husband and two striped cats in Chevy Chase, where she is currently working on a book about spotted animals.
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| Dr. Margaret A. Weitekamp curates the National Air and Space Museum's social and cultural dimensions of spaceflight collection. She earned a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Cornell University. During her graduate work, Weitekamp was a Mellon fellow in the humanities and spent a year in residence at the NASA Headquarters History Office in Washington, D.C. as the American Historical Association / NASA Aerospace History Fellow.
She is the author of Pluto’s Secret: An Icy World’s Tale of Discovery, written with David DeVorkin and illustrated by Diane Kidd. Her book Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women in Space Program, won the 2004 Eugene M. Emme Award for Astronautical Literature from the American Astronautical Society. She is currently developing a new book project, a social and cultural history of space memorabilia.
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