Alabama Writers' Conclave Conference July 15-17, 2011
Huntsville Mariott
Huntsville, Alabama
MEET THE FACULTY
Chris Roerden (Fiction/Voice) is best known
for her award-winning books for writers: DON'T
SABOTAGE YOUR SUBMISSION, Insider Information from a Career Editor, and its original
version, DON'T MURDER YOUR MYSTERY, 24
Fiction-Writing Techniques to Save Your
Manuscript from Turning Up D.O.A. Chris has
edited fiction and nonfiction manuscripts
published by St. Martin's Press, Harlequin,
Berkley Prime Crime, Walker & Co., Midnight Ink,
Intrigue, Perseverance Press, Oceanview, Rodale,
Viking, and numerous small presses. She's written
11 books and a game, ghostwriting all but four.
Her books have won the prestigious Agatha
Award for Best Nonfiction (2006), Benjamin
Franklin Award for Literary Criticism (2009),
Florida Writer's Best Educational Book, and 2009
Royal Palm Book of the Year. Both books were
short-listed for the national Anthony, Macavity,
USA Best Books, and ForeWord Magazine's
Writing Book of the Year.
A summa cum laude graduate of the University of
Maine, Chris taught writing there and at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She's past
president of a Midwest trade association of 250
commercial and university presses and now chairs
the Mystery Writers of America/McCloy
Scholarship Program. Visit Chris at writersinfo.info.
Thomas Lakeman (Fiction/Screenwriting) is the author of three mystery novels published by St. Martin's Minotaur: The Shadow Catchers (2006), Chillwater Cove (2007) and Broken Wing (2009), a continuing about a pair of FBI special agents, Mike Yeager and Peggy Weaver. Lakeman also wrote the screenplay Triptych, an independent feature produced by Tea Tree Films, as well as numerous stage plays for production by the Playhouse in the Park in Mobile, Alabama. Lakeman earned his B.A. in English and Theatre from The University of the South, Sewanee, TN and his M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University. In 1986 he was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for independent study abroad. During the 1990s he worked in the marketing department of Universal Pictures and was a founding partner of Digital Planet, a southern California Web design company later acquired by iXL, Inc. He was also writer and co-creator of the animated Web series Madeleine's Mind. He currently resides in Fairhop, Alabama, but is currently serving as the Tennessee Williams Playwright-in-Residence at the University of the South.
Susan Luther (Poetry), a native of Nebraska, has lived in her mother's home region of the South nearly all her adult life, earning degrees from L.S.U., the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and Vanderbilt University. Her publications include academic criticism; two chapbooks of poetry, Poems on the Line, composed during a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and Greatest Hits: 1975-2000 (Pudding House); a full-length volume of poetry, Breathing in the Dark; individual poems in a wide range of journals and anthologies, including Whatever Remembers Us: An Anthology of Alabama Poetry; and miscellaneous prose. Her work has won several Hackney Awards, awards from the Alabama State Poetry Society and others, and has been a finalist in various competitions such as the Richard Snyder Award (Ashland Poetry Press) and the New Letters Literary Awards. A past Assistant/Associate Editor of POEM magazine and member of the founding board of directors of the Alabama Writers' Forum, she has been a resident of Huntsville, Alabama for many years, and has lectured and taught at UA Huntsville as well as in a variety of other academic, community and private settings.
Kathy Rhodes (creative nonfiction) is Senior Writer/Editor at TurnStyle Writing, Editing & Publishing. She is Publisher/Editor of Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal. Kathy is author of Pink Butterbeans: Stories from the heart of a Southern woman and co-editor of Gathering: Writers of Williamson County. Her essay, “An Open Letter,” was published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 3 and was singled out for a review in The New Yorker. Kathy is on the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Writers Alliance, a member of the Nashville Writers Alliance, and Past-President of the Williamson County Council for the Written Word. She is co-director of the 2010 Oxford Creative Nonfiction Conference (Oxford MS), featuring Lee Gutkind. She holds a BA in English from Delta State University, did graduate work at the University of Memphis, and is a former English teacher. Kathy was born and raised in the Mississippi Delta and now lives in Franklin, Tennessee, where she enjoys hiking and kayaking. She can be reached online here.
Sonny Brewer (Writer-in-Residence) is the author of the novels, The Poet of Tolstoy Park, A Sound Like Thunder, Cormac - The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing, and The Widow and the Tree. Sonny edits the anthology Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe. He founded Over the Transom Bookstore in Fairhope and its annual literary conference, Southern Writers Reading, and is also founder of the non-profit Fairhope Center for Writing Arts.
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