Our Featured Speakers

Crystal Wilkinson - Read Crystal's Bio...

Opening address- Affrilachian poet and fiction writer

Kim Edwards- Read Kim's Bio...

Festival Luncheon Speaker- "When Art Meets Life"

Betty Winston Baye- Read Betty's bio...

Closing Ceremony- Courier-Journal Columinist

Session Speakers and Presenters

Paths to Publication- Session 1

Beverle Graves Myers writes the Tito Amato mysteries set in dazzling, decadent 18th-century Venice. Cruel Music is her latest title, and The Iron Tongue of Midnight will be released in March 2008. Bev also writes short fiction set in a variety of times and places. Her stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Futures, Woman’s World, and numerous anthologies. Bev has been nominated for the Derringer Award and the Kentucky Literary Award. A retired psychiatrist, Bev now writes full time from her home in Louisville, Kentucky.

For further information visit her website: http://www.beverlegravesmyers.com/

Ellen Birkett Morris is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, a fiction writer and an essayist. Her fiction and poetry have been published in journals including Alimentum, The Centrifugal Eye, and The Pedestal Magazine. Her work for children has appeared in Plays, The Drama Magazine for Young People, The Girls’ Book of Friendship and The Girls’ Book of Love. Her essays have appeared in many anthologies including Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing and The Writing Group Book and on WFPL radio, Louisville ’s National Public Radio affiliate.

Lynn Renau chuckles as she recounts the story of a time in 1992, when a Churchill Downs executive told then-Kentucky Derby Museum curator, "You can do all the research you want, but no woman is ever going to write a history of our racetrack!" Answering that challenge, she self-published Racing Around Kentucky in 1995, then edited and republished the information as Jockeys, Belles and Bluegrass Kings, a user-friendly Kentucky racing guide. For her research on long-forgotten African American contributions to the sport of kings she received the Isaac Murphy Award in 1996.

In 1997, she published FREEBEE The Story of a Good-for-Nothing Horse, a fictionalized autobiography. A 5-year research project, So Close from Home The Legacy of Brownsboro Road was published in March 2007. Renau earned her BA and MSSW degrees from the University of Louisville. She is a former Filson Historical Society museum curator who lectures on antiques and preservation and has contributed articles to The Kentucky Encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of Louisville, Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports in the United States, SPUR Magazine, Arts Across Kentucky, and P. A. S. T. (Pioneer America Society Transactions).

With computer-savvy colleagues she is now developing an interdisciplinary community website from her multi-cultural, multi-faceted history of Brownsboro Road, and planning presentations of "Hearing Harry Out", a program based on the 1891 autobiography of enslaved Kentuckian Harry Smith.

Women's Writing Groups 101- Session 2

For further information visit their website: http://www.womenwhowrite.com/

A panel from Women Who Write, a Louisville group of women writers with diverse backgrounds who are dedicated to fostering excellence in literary creation and encouraging women and girls of all ages to use writing as a creative force in their lives.

Angie Edwards became interested in the writing process while helping her fourth grade students develop their portfolios. Now retired from teaching, she works at the Kentucky Derby Museum and finds lots of colorful material to write about at the race track. Most recently, Underwired published her first essay, "First Best Friend Retro," in the November 2007 edition.

Rita Spalding-Harpring’s first literary audience was a nesting mockingbird in the yard of her rural home. An imaginative child, she tied her writings to tree branches. Mysteriously the writings disappeared as the songbird returned notes of encouragement. Her first book, Abstract Ribbons is a collection of poems written from eight years old to forty. Her work appears in eight Women Who Write anthologies. In 1995 she received a special recognition award from Jefferson Community College for her ethereal poem For Lisa. A collection of her poetry was exhibited at the main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library. Rita has been a member of Women Who Write since 1995 and currently serves as Director of the group. Rita has also served as panelist for the Dorothy Norton Clay Fellowships at the Mary Anderson Center. Her poem Winter 1944 was published in the national magazine, EX-POW Bulletin, Volume 64 Number 11/12 November/ December 2007. She is currently writing about her father’s experiences as a WWII Prisoner of War.

Publications:

Abstract Ribbons, Rita S. Spalding, Butler Publishing, ISBN # 0-9633941-0-X

Rita S. Spalding, contributing writer:

Women Who Write, Volume V, 1998

Women Who Write, Volume VII, 2001

Women Who Write, Volume VIII, 2002

Women Who Write, Volume IX, 2003

Calliope, 10th Anniversary Anthology of Women Who Write, Volume X, 2004

Calliope, 11th Annual Anthology of Women Who Write, Volume XI, 2005

Calliope, 12th Annual Anthology of Women Who Write, Volume XII, 2006

Calliope, 13th Annual Anthology of Women Who Write, Volume XIII, 2007

EX-POW Bulletin, Volume 64 Number 11/12 November/ December 2007, Winter 1944

Jorena Faulkner- Inspired by her mother’s death from breast cancer in 2001, Jorena D. Faulkner made the life changing decision to follow her dreams of becoming a multi-dimensional artist.

Jorena is a published writer, poet, artist and musician and has been a member of Women Who Write since winning the 2004 Women Who Write Poetry and Short Prose Contest for her entry "Wearing Mom" (a true life account of her first Komen breast cancer walk). She enjoys being active in her community in support of the women's social change agenda, having had her works performed by organizations such as Until the Violence Stops: Kentucky. She also served seven months as Chair of the first Kentucky Women's Book Festival and is an Arts Meets Activism grant recipient of The Kentucky Foundation for Women in music.

Jorena currently serves as the Associate Director of Women Who Write and continues to focus on her writing and KFW grant-work while playing locally with her band Jaida Blue, incorporating her music, art, poetry and writing as inspiration for other women who aspire to live their dreams. It’s never too late.

Known to her friends as "Blondie", San Dee Crabtree has been a life long writer. In search of mentors and education, she joined Women Who Write in 2006. Her mother always said that the only thing you really could pass on to your children is values. Loss of several close relatives instilled an urgency to pass on their sage advice. Writing memoir and recording family history is now her passion. Blondie is a coal miner’s daughter born in Muhlenberg County. This humble beginning inspired the southern rural roots of her current fictional family tales. She now resides in Louisville and relishes sharing her latest stories with her nine year old twice published granddaughter.

Take Your Writing Deeper- Session 3

Kit Willihnganz has been writing all of her life. She owns and operates Women Writing for (a) Change, a writing school for women that emphasizes nurturing and exploration in a supportive, non-competitive environment. Kit holds a B.A. in Theatrical Linguistics from Indiana University and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Writing from Spalding University. She believes in writing as a form of healing and a source of joy for both the author and the reader. You can visit Women Writing for (a) Change for upcoming classes and events."

For further information visit her website: http://www.womenwritinglou.com/

Writing Thrillers- Session 4

Lynny Prince started writing when she was twelve, writing and illustrating her own books about horses, her first love, and was inspired by Marguerite Henry and her Misty of Chincoteague books. The books Lynny penned were full of adventures and always had happy endings as only a child could write them. She also started playing guitar around the same time, and so began a career in music that has spanned some 30 years. Her group, Miss Joshua, won several awards for their original material before going their separate ways in January of 2000.

She and her husband Matt married in May of 2000, a second marriage for both, and she began writing seriously shortly after that. Her husband insisted that she stop working as a paralegal assistant and write full time when he read the first few chapters of one of her unpublished novel’s about the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. Along with the continual support from Matt and her two children, she began to write full-time until her mother fell seriously ill. She began writing “Scattered Leaves: The Legend of Ghostkiller” in 2004 in the spare moments she had between helping to care for her mother. She says the book saved her sanity during the dark hours and the spirits that she wrote about are still with her today. “I’m just the vehicle by which their story traveled to the paper,” she says.

Lynny is of Scots-Irish and Cherokee ancestry, with German thrown in “for the sauerkraut side.” She lives on a small farm she shares with her husband Matt, who is Dakota Sioux, in rural KY. They are the founders of Red Road Awareness, an organization that raises awareness relating to Native American issues that are faced in the Kentuckiana area, and are also on the committee for the Ancestor Days Memorial Reunion, which commemorates the reburial of the 900+ graves of Indigenous people that were dug up and desecrated in 1987 in Uniontown, KY.

Laura Benedict’s essays and short stories exploring the darker side of life have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and a number of anthologies including Surreal South: An Anthology of Short Fiction and Poetry, which she edited with her husband, Pinckney Benedict. Ballantine Books published her debut novel, a thriller entitled Isabella Moon, in 2007; a second thriller, Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts, will be released in Spring 2009. For the past decade, she has reviewed books for The Grand Rapids Press in Michigan. She claims both Cincinnati, Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky as her hometowns, and currently resides in Southern Illinois, a lonely, enchanted sort of place that offers excellent inspiration for writing thrillers.

For further information visit her website: http://www.laurabenedict.com/home.html

Annie Fellows Johnston & The Authors Club- Afternoon Session 1a

Delinda Stephens Buie received an A.A. degree from Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Kentucky before completing her B.A. at Spalding University in 1973. She began graduate work at the University of Edinburgh, and subsequently earned an M.L.S. from the University of Kentucky in 1975. She also has studied at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the Kent School of Social Work at the University of Louisville, where she earned the M.S.S.W. degree in May 2006. She began her career as Preservation Archivist in the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center in 1975, and in 1976 was appointed Assistant Curator of Rare Books. She became Curator in 1991.

Over the last thirty years Buie has been active in the Kentucky Council on Archives, served on the University of Louisville’s Commission on the Status of Women, and worked closely with the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and the Women’s Center. She has curated exhibitions at the University of Louisville and Louisville area galleries and collaborated on publications such as For Love of Learning, a print and online guide to the University’s special collections and archives, and Louisville Then and Now, featuring historic photographs from the University’s Photographic Archives.

The Self as a Writer- Speaking From a Position of a New World - Afternoon Session 2a

Estella Conwill Majozo is a Professor of English at the University of Louisville. Her books include Jiva Telling Rites (Third World Press, 1991); Libation: A Literary Pilgrimage through the African American Soul (Harlem River Press, 1991); Come Out the Wilderness: Memoir by a Black Woman Artist (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1999); and Middle Passage: 105 Days (Africa World Press, 2002); Blessings for a New World (Third World Press, 2007). Her plays include Freedom Clothes: The Saga of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn on the Underground Railroad (Kentucky Heritage Council/Kentucky African Heritage Commission Grant 2002); and Ringshout the Route which has been developed into a National Rite of Initiation into African American Culture. Her commissioned public art monuments (with her brother, Houston Conwill, and architect Joseph DePace) include Revelation: Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Memorial at Yerba Buena Garden, San Francisco (cited by Ebony Magazine as the most unique of all the King Monuments); Rivers: Langston Hughes Memorial at The Schomburg--a Cosmogram under which lies the ashes of poet, Langston Hughes (recognized by the Excellence in Design Award, Art Commission of New York); The Stations Project at The Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University (selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as one of the best projects in the nation 1993); and The New Ringshout: Memorial Tribute to African Burial Ground in the Federal Building, New York City. Honors also include “Salute to the Seven Sisters, Pleiades Award” (2006); J. T. Stewart Literary Award at Hedgebrook (2000). Distinguished Alumni Fellow, University of Louisville, (1999).

Jiva Telling Rites, 0-88378-138 Third World Press

Blessings for a New World, -13: 978-0-88378-270, Third World Press

The Middle Passage: 105 Days, 0-86543-981-8 Africa World Press

Libation: A literary Pilgrimage Through the African American Soul, 0-86316-024-7

Come Out the Wilderness, 13:978-1-55861-207-5

Changing the Changes (CD Baby) Hermine Pinson & Majozo

People of Freetowns- From Historical Research, to Play, to Documentary Film.- Afternoon Session 1b

A native of Connecticut, D. Cameron Lawrence is a producer and writer living in Louisville, Ky. Under the name of her media firm Down to Earth Productions, she produces radio, and writes for magazines and newspapers. Her programs and articles have explored health, ecology, women’s issues, social justice, animal welfare and more. Currently, she is producing her first public television documentary People of Freetowns, slated for broadcast in 2008.

Cameron’s feature stories and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Hartford Courant, American Legacy, The New Southerner, Ladies’ Home Journal, Health, Louisville Magazine, Alternative Medicine and NPR’s website.

For 12 years, Cameron was affiliated with WFPL-FM, Louisville’s NPR-affiliate, where she produced Down to Earth, covering environmental topics; historical radio dramas; university speakers’ series; and was co-producer, co-creator and host of the popular live call-in program State of Affairs.

In 2004, with her husband and frequent collaborator John Gregory, Cameron received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for the radio documentary Sisters in Pain. Cameron (with her husband) also received “Best of Radio” in the Green Eyeshades Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, as well as a Silver Reel in National Documentary from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and a Clarion Award from the Association of Women in Communications. Sisters in Pain was also a finalist for the Sidney Hillman Prize, recognizing journalism that explores social justice issues. For both her broadcast and print work, she has received several state and regional recognitions from the Kentucky Associated Press and the Society of Professional Journalists.

Women Writing in Berea: Exploring Inner and Outer Voices - Afternoon Session 2b

Libby Falk Jones, professor of English at Berea College, teaches courses in creative, academic, and professional writing. Her poems and essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Low Explosions: Writings on the Body, New Growth: Recent Kentucky Writings, Connecticut Review, Poetry as Prayer: Appalachian Women Speak, I To I: Life Writing by Kentucky Feminists, and the Alhambra Poetry Calendar 2008. She has co-edited a collection of writings on women’s utopian fictions (Feminism, Utopia, and Narrative) and is currently working on two collections of poems. For further information visit her website: http://www.berea.edu/etsc/people/libbyjones.asp

Wind Publications recently published Fresh Fleshed Sisters, a new work of short fiction by Normandi Ellis. She is the editor of Berea College Magazine and the author of five books, including Awakening Osiris, based on her own translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs and an award-winning collection of fiction, Sorrowful Mysteries. She has received writing fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

Barbara Wade is a professor of English at Berea College, where she teaches literature, writing, and women’s studies courses. Her poetry and essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in the Appalachian Heritage Magazine, Appalachian Journal, Florida Review Chapbook, River Walk Journal, Women’s Studies Quarterly, I To I: Life Writing by Kentucky Feminists, and Poetry as Prayer: Appalachian Women Speak. Her book Frances Newman: Southern Satirist and Literary Rebel was published in 1998 by the University of Alabama Press.

For further information visit her website: http://www.berea.edu/etsc/people/barbarawade.asp