Presenter Bios in Alphabetical Order
Conference
Andrea Cheng
Andrea Cheng is the author of several books for children and young adults. Her first novel, Marika, was selected by the city of Cincinnati for “On the Same page,” a citywide reading program. Honeysuckle House, Anna the Bookbinder, and Shanghai Messenger received Parent’s Choice Awards. Grandfather Counts was recently featured on Reading Rainbow. The Lemon Sisters won the Ohioana Book award (2007) in the juvenile category. Where the Steps Were is the first book that Cheng has both written and illustrated. Some of her books draw on her background as the child of Hungarian immigrants as well as the background of her husband, the son of immigrants from China.
Dr. Cynthia Crane
Dr. Crane is an assistant professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She has a Ph.D. in English and Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Cincinnati, an M.A. from Xavier University, and a B.A. from Wittenberg University. She has received numerous awards, including the prestigious J. William Fulbright Scholarship and a P.E.O. National Scholar’s Award. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in various publications.
Today Dr. Crane is recognized as a leading expert on Mischlinge, the so-called "half-breed" children who were persecuted by Hitler because of their families' mixed religious heritage. It is a subject of great personal interest to Dr. Crane, as she eventually learned that her own father was a Mischlinge who had fled Germany as a child. Dr. Crane has investigated forgotten Mischlinge at length in her thought-provoking book, Divided Lives: The Untold Stories of Jewish-Christian Women in Nazi Germany. Although most of these children were Christian, they were classified as Jewish, and were persecuted under Hitler's Nuremberg Laws.
Regina Doman
Editor Sophia Institute Press
Regina is the author of the Fairy Tale Novels. The fifth novel in the series is scheduled for release by summer 2010. Her picture book for children, Angel in the Waters, has sold over 100,000 copies. She is the creator and managing editor of the John Paul 2 High series for teens. The third book in the series is scheduled to debut in 2010. Regina reviews and edits fiction manuscripts for Sophia Institute Press in an effort to develop their line of Catholic fiction. In addition to writing and editing, Regina home schools their six children, does arts and crafts, and speaks at conferences, schools, and workshops. To the question, “How do you manage to get it all done?” Regina responds, “What makes you think I get it all done?” Visit www.FairyTaleNovels.com to learn more about the series.
Jane Friedman
Editor Writer’s Digest
Jane Friedman is the publisher and editorial director of the Writer's Digest community at F+W Media in Cincinnati, Ohio. She oversees Writer's Digest Magazine, Writer’s Digest Books, and the Writer's Market series. She is also involved with and oversees related events, competitions, and online education for Writer’s Digest. She has a blog on the publishing industry, with an emphasis on helping writers, at There Are No Rules.
Shelly Shepard Gray
Shelly writes Amish fiction as Shelley Shepard Gray. She writes romance as Shelley Galloway. See her website to learn more.
Teri Horsley
Teri Horsley is a Hamilton resident who began her freelance writing career in 2006, after meeting the Editor of the Journal News at the first Mad Anthony Writers conference.Since that time, she has written hundreds of newspaper articles, dining reviews and columns as well as contributing to regional and statewide magazines. She has had short stories published with her most recent being in the Thomas Nelson anthology "All My Bad Habits I learned from Grandpa." Teri received a Bachelors Degree in Communication from Northern Kentucky University in 1984, and prior to her freelance writing career spent 15 years in Radio News, reporting and hosting her own daily talk show at several Cincinnati radio stations. In addition to her writing she currently works in Outdoor Advertising Sales and is the Guest Coordinator for "Conversations Through Courage", a syndicated radio program that is part of Erin Campbell Ministries of Cincinnati.
Sammie Justesen
Agen, Norlights Press
For many years, Sammie Justesen worked as an independent writer/editor for publishing houses such as Mosby, Springhouse, Lippincott, and Prentice Hall. Along with editing hundreds of fiction and nonfiction books, she published a medical guide, technical articles, poetry, and novels. Sammie founded Northern Lights Literary Services in 2006 and began her career as an agent. Since then, she has acquired a strong understanding of the unique problems writers face in their quest to become published authors. In 2009, she joined her husband Dee as co-owner of NorlightsPress.com.
Dee Justesen
Publisher, Norlights Press
Dee Justesen is a retired information services consultant and senior project manager with more than forty years of business and management experience. In 2009, he founded NorlightsPress.com, a royalty paying, non-vanity, non-subsidy small press publisher that offers print, eBooks, and other digital and electronic formats of each title.
Vicki Moss
Vicki Moss is an award winning writer whose stories and poetry have been published in kids’ and adult magazines. She’s jumped out of a perfectly good airplane, rafted wild rivers, scuba-dived with turtles off Maui, jumped horses in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and even interviewed an ex-terrorist and a snake-handling protestant to extract a good story. With six picture books being considered by an editor, two Christian romance novels represented by her agent, and her two-time award winning young adult novel awaiting an enthusiastic publisher, she’s been honored to read and perform a memoir on two occasions at the Southern Women Writers” Conference held at Rome, Georgia’s Berry College.
Rod Pennington
Rod Pennington has six published novels; the most recent is The Fourth Awakening. The motion picture rights to this book have been optioned by a major Hollywood studio. The second book in the series, The Gathering Darkness, is scheduled for release in October 2010. The third book in the series, Return to the Light, is under contract.
Rod Pennington has also sold two other original screenplays. Over 400 articles and features have appeared under his byline in regional, national, and international publications. Pennington was a long time instructor in the Writer’s Digest Novel Writing Workshop and Advanced Novel Writing Workshop.
Zachary Petit
Zachary Petit is an award-winning journalist and the managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine. Alongside the hundreds of articles he has penned as a staff writer and editor, his words have appeared in National Geographic magazine, Melissa Rossi’s What Every American Should Know book series and other publications. Currently, he’s working on a novel.
Nancy Pinard
Nancy Pinard, the author of two novels, Shadow Dancing and Butterfly Soup, has also published numerous short stories. She has an MFA in creative writing from Queens University, Charlotte, North Carolina, and serves on the board of the Antioch Writers Workshop. She currently lives in Dayton, Ohio, where she writes and teaches creative writing in various venues, including Sinclair Community College and University of Dayton LLI. She has also given her time to help plan and promote the Mad Anthony Writers’ Conference.
Alice Pope
Alice Pope has been editor of Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market for more than 15 years, edits Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, and serves as Managing Editor of the Writer’s Digest Books Market Books department. In addition to working on seven market books annually, she’s worked on trade books like Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul and Writing & Selling the YA Novel by K.L. Going. She had a short and unspectacular run as an SCBWI Regional Advisor, reads lots of picture books about trucks to her 5-year-old son, teaches webinars, and maintains Alice’s CWIM Blog.
Rick Robinson
Rick Robinson has spent thirty years in politics and law, including a stint on Capitol Hill and a run for the United States Congress. Rick’s first book, The Maximum Contribution, was named a “Finalist” in the 2008 Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the genre of political fiction. His latest book, Sniper Bid, was released on Election Day, 2009 and opened on Amazon’s Top Seller list at #46 of political fiction.
Rick’s third offering, Manifest Destiny, is due out in the spring of 2010.
A graduate of Eastern Kentucky University and Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Rick currently practices law in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky, with the law firm of Graydon Head & Ritchey LLP. Rick, and his wife Linda, live in Ft. Mitchell with their three children, Josh, Zach, and MacKenzie. He is also the political writer for OneNewEngland, an e-zine about New England.
Ron Rollins
Ron Rollins is interim Editor of Cox Ohio Publishing’s newspapers in Butler and Warren counties. He has 23 years at Cox, most at the Dayton Daily News, where he has been a night metro editor, arts/entertainment editor, and a managing editor. He is the editor of three books on Ohio history published by the DDN, and writes a weekly column for the paper on arts and culture. A contributing editor at Ohio Magazine, he frequently writes for that publication about southwest Ohio people and places. He’s a graduate of Miami University, where he teaches journalism part-time. He met his wife, Amy, at Miami, and she is also an editor at the DDN. They have two grown children and live in Kettering.
Nathan Singer
Nathan Singer is a novelist, playwright, composer, and experimental performing artist from Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of the critically acclaimed novels A Prayer for Dawn, Chasing the Wolf, and In the Light of You. He teaches writing at Northern Kentucky University and the University of Cincinnati, and is currently at work on all manner of ill business.
Reviews of his books include:
- “With a keenly developed sense of disillusionment and a real talent for capturing the vernacular, Singer leads readers on a raging, rollicking ride through the underbelly of American society.”(Publisher Weekly, re: A Prayer for Dawn)
- "A rollicking dash through space and time."(Booklist, re: Chasing the Wolf)
- "Singer evokes with rare passion the tumultuous confusions and conflicts as teens seek to work out their racial and sexual identities...readers will find Mikal’s erratic passage through a rough adolescence both vivid and compelling."(Publishers Weekly, re:In the Light of You)
Marilyn Walton
Marilyn is a graduate of The Ohio State University. She has written six books for children, including the successful Celebration Series for Raintree-Steck-Vaughn. Her book, Chameleons’ Rainbow, won a Children’s Choice Award in 1986. She has had critiques published in the NCTE Journal, and has edited several book. She is the author of Rhapsody in Junk—A Daughter’s Return to Germany to Finish Her Father’s Story, a non-fiction World War II memoir. More recently, she completed Badge on My Collar—A Chronicle of Courageous Canines and its sequel, Badge on My Collar II—To Serve with Honor. She and her husband, a retired Miami University professor, raised three sons in Oxford, Ohio. She has taught in Miami University's Institute of Learning in Retirement and has given presentations in many of Ohio's schools for Right to Read Week. She is a member of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, and as an historian, conducts research in the United States and Europe, particularly focusing on prisoner of war issues.
Randy Williams
Murder & Mayhem
Richard Burkhardt, MD
Butler County Coroner
Lawrence Fiehrer
Defense Attorney
Patrick Moeller
Prosecuting Attorney
