Guest Authors
The Books in Bloom authors will read from their work, make presentations, and sign books. Check the Author Events Schedule for times and locations for each author's presentation. When not reading either in the Conservatory or Author's Tent, authors will be in the Crescent Gardens.
Please click on author's name for further information.
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Andrea Hollander Budy
www.andreahollanderbudy.com
Born in Berlin, Germany, of American parents, raised in Colorado, Texas, New York, and New Jersey, and educated at Boston University and the University of Colorado, Andrea Hollander Budy is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Woman in the Painting, The Other Life and House Without a Dreamer, which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Other honors include the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize for prose memoir, the Runes Poetry Award, two poetry fellowships the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Arkansas Arts Council. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, college textbooks, including Writing Poems, The Poets' Grimm, and The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. Her work appears regularly in such literary journals as Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, New Letters, FIELD, Five Points, Shenandoah, and Creative Nonfiction. Since 1977 Budy has lived in the Arkansas Ozark Mountains near Mountain View, where she and her husband Todd and their now-grown son Brooke ran a bed-and-breakfast inn for fifteen years. For the past seventeen years she has been the Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College, where she was awarded the Lamar Williamson Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
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Stephen R. Donaldson
www.stephenrdonaldson.com
Born in 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio, Stephen R. Donaldson lived in India (where his father was a medical missionary) until 1963. He graduated from the College of Wooster (Ohio) in 1968, served two years as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, doing hospital work in Akron, then attended Kent State University, where he received his M.A. in English in 1971.
After dropping out of his Ph.D. program and moving to New Jersey in order to write fiction, Donaldson made his publishing debut with the first "Covenant" trilogy in 1977. That enabled him to move to a healthier climate. He now lives in New Mexico.
The novels for which he is best known have received a number of awards. However, the achievements of which he is most proud are the ones that seemed the most unlikely. In 1993 he received a Doctor of Literature degree from the College of Wooster, and in 1994 he gained a black belt in Shotokan karate from Sensei Mike Heister and Anshin Personal Defense.
After completing the five-book, seven-year Gap sequence of science fiction novels, Donaldson spent quite some time "on vacation." However, he has now returned to work. His most recent book prior to The Man Who Fought Alone was a second collection of short fiction, Reave the Just and Other Tales. The second of four books in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, titled Fatal Revenant, was released in late 2007 to critical acclaim.
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Tim Ernst
www.cloudland.net
Author and photographer Tim Ernst has found an ideal way to seamlessly combine his artistic talents and a deeply felt passion for nature. His coffee table books capture the beauty of the Ozarks in words and photographs that help others see ‘the natural state’ with new eyes, and his well-known guidebooks make it possible for thousands of people to explore the Arkansas outdoors for themselves, following trails that Ernst himself played a large part in establishing as founder of the Ozark Highlands Trail Association.
Tim has been writing his popular online Cloudland Cabin Journal since 1998. In more than 1,000 pages so far he details life in the wilderness, and has readers from all over the world checking in daily to see what he is up to.
His newest book of photography, Arkansas Waterfalls: Scenic Icons of the Natural State came out last fall. It details more than 130 great waterfalls all over the state His other recent guidebooks include Arkansas Dayhikes for Kids and Families, easy trails for the youngest hikers; and Arkansas Nature Lover’s Guidebook which covers over 101 great scenic locations all over the state.
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Donald Harington
www.donaldharington.com
Although he was born and raised in Little Rock, Donald Harington spent nearly all of his early summers in the Ozark mountain hamlet of Drakes Creek, his mother's hometown, where his grandparents operated the general store and post office. There, before he lost his hearing to meningitis at the age of twelve, he listened carefully to the vanishing Ozark folk language and the old tales told by storytellers.
His academic career was in art and art history because, although determined to become a novelist (he wrote his first one at six), he felt that his ultimate teaching vocation should not interfere with his writing. He has taught art history at a variety of colleges in New York, New England, South Dakota and finally at his alma mater, the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he has been lecturing for fifteen years in the same room where he first took courses in art history. He lives in Fayetteville with his wife Kim.
His first novel, THE CHERRY PIT, about Little Rock, was published by Random House in 1965, and since then he has published fourteen other novels, most all of them set in the Ozark hamlet of his creation, Stay More, based loosely upon Drakes Creek. These include LIGHTNING BUG, SOME OTHER PLACE. THE RIGHT PLACE., THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE ARKANSAS OZARKS, THE CHOIRING OF THE TREES, and, most recently, FARTHER ALONG, released May 2008. He won the Porter Prize in 1987, the Heasley Prize at Lyon College in 1998, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 1999 and that same year won the Arkansas Fiction Award of Arkansas Library Association. John Guilds in his anthology, ARKANSAS, ARKANSAS, wrote, "if Miller Williams ranks as the greatest poet born, bred, nurtured, and still living in Arkansas, Donald Harington is by the same standards Arkansas's greatest novelist." In 2006, he was awarded the inaugural Oxford American award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. Entertainment Weekly has named him “America’s Greatest Unknown Novelist.”
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Carolyn Hart
www.carolynhart.com
Carolyn Hart is the author of 36 novels, and winner of numerous awards and accolades for ingeniously plotted mysteries. She is the only author to be nominated eight times for the coveted Agatha Award for Best Mystery Novel, and has been called “The American Agatha Christie” for her intricately crafted novels.
Born in Oklahoma City in 1936, she began her love affair with the mystery by reading Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and Beverly Gray. She grew up fascinated by news and newspapers, and went on to major in journalism at the University of Oklahoma, receiving a BA in journalism with honors in 1958 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She worked briefly as a reporter until she married a young law student and began a family.
A writing contest enticed her to return to her love of writing and lead to seeing her first book published. She wrote several mysteries for young adults before switching to adult fiction, but success was slow in coming. She continued to publish for several decades, but was discouraged by slow sales and the apparent indifference toward mysteries by and about women. This changed in 1987 with the success of her first mystery in a series that features a female bookseller turned amateur sleuth. The tide of interest turned and suddenly Carolyn Hart was riding a wave of enthusiasm that continues today. The series has been a huge success, hitting many national bestseller lists. April Fool Dead in the series was a New York Times extended list bestseller.
In 1994, Hart created a new sleuth, Henrietta O’Dwyer (Henrie O) Collins, a retired newspaperwoman. There are six titles in this series. The most recent is Set Sail for Murder.
In 2003, she penned Letter from Home, a stand-alone novel set in Oklahoma in 1944. Letter from Home received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction by the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa. It was named a Best Book of 2003 by Publishers Weekly, and also won the Agatha for Best Mystery Novel of 2003.
In May 2007, Ms Hart received of the Lifetime Achievement Award at Malice Domestic, the annual conference in Alexandria, VA, that honors traditional mysteries with the presentation of Agatha Awards. She continues to live and write in Oklahoma City. Her website is www.CarolynHart.com.
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JA Jance
www.jajance.com
J.A. (Judith Ann) Jance discovered the magic of Frank Baum's OZ books as a child and knew then and there that a writer was what she was meant to be. But the tortuous route she took to becoming a best-selling author would make a fascinating plot for a novel. She was born in South Dakota, raised in Bisbee, Arizona, and with the help of a scholarship, became the first member of her family to graduate from a four-year college.
She added a Masters degree in Library Science to her BA in English and secondary education, then taught high school English for four years and spent another five years as a school librarian.
A divorce left her raising two children on her own, and she switched to selling insurance, work that allowed her to carve out early morning hours to return to her love of writing. She managed to finish three books by writing daily between 4- 7am.
Her first work was based on a real life murder case, but an editor pointed out that she handled the fictionalized parts much more believably that she did the actual events, and set her on the road to finding her own voice as a novelist.
Jance came up with J.P. Beaumont, a police detective in Seattle, and her first character-driven series was born. Joanna Brady, a strong and resourceful woman living in the desert southwest, inspired a second hit series, and then she added Alison Reynolds, a former television journalist with a knack for attracting danger. Several stand alone novels add to her prolific output.
With numerous awards and millions of books in print, JA Jance has more than proven that she was, indeed, born to write.
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Veda Boyd Jones
www.vedaboydjones.com
Veda Boyd Jones enjoys the challenge of writing for diverse readers. She is the author of forty-two books: five children's historical novels, twenty-one children's biographies, three children's nonfiction books, three picture books, nine romance novels, and a coloring book. Other published works include over 300 articles and stories in children's and adult magazines (Cricket, Highlights, Humpty Dumpty, The Writer, Writer's Digest, Woman's World, etc.), articles in reference books, and five romance novellas. Jones earned an MA in history at the University of Arkansas, has taught writing at Crowder College in Neosho, Missouri, and currently teaches for the Institute of Children's Literature. She and her husband, Jimmie, an architect, have three sons, Landon, Morgan, and Marshall.
Jones is a previous winner of the Writer's Digest Writing Competition in the articles division for a children's profile of Rachel Carson. Her romance novel Callie's Mountain was voted best contemporary in the annual readers' poll by Heartsong Presents a few years ago. Among her awards through the years from the Missouri Writer's Guild are Best Magazine Article, Best Historical Article, Best Adult Fiction, Best Children's Fiction, Best Children's Book, and Best Romance Novel.
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Carla Kilough McClafferty
/www.carlamcclafferty.com
Carla Kilough McClafferty grew up in the small farming community of Tomberlin, Arkansas, where her parents farmed rice and soybeans. Many long, lazy days of her childhood were spent under the outstretched arms of a giant pecan tree. Her elementary school didn't have a library, using instead bookshelves under the windows that filled one wall of the classroom. She says, "To this day, libraries fill me with awe and appreciation."
After high school, she graduated from Baptist Medical Center School of Radiologic Technology, and worked in local hospitals and clinics. She and her husband Pat have three children, Ryan, Brittney and Corey.
Although Carla always loved to read, she had never written until the death of her youngest son, Corey. After his tragic loss, Carla began to write about the experience. The story of her journey through grief and suffering became the subject of her first book. Next, she began writing non-fiction books and articles for young readers.
Recently, she received notice that one of her books, Something Out of Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium, was chosen for the 2008-2009 Charlie May Simon reading list. Today, Carla is a freelance author and speaker on both secular and Christian topics. She is currently a Regional Advisor for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI.)
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Christine Matthews
“Christine Matthews” has published over 60 stories under her real name, Marthayn Pelegrimas, as well as her “Matthews” mystery pseudonym. She has appeared in DEADLY ALLIES II, ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, LETHAL LADIES, FOR CRIME OUT LOUD I & II, Mickey Spillane’s VENGEANCE IS HERS, CAT CRIMES ON HOLIDAY, TILL DEATH DO US PART and HOLLYWOOD AND CRIME. Her stories have been chosen four times for Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg’s BEST OF . . . books, the most recent being “And Then She was Gone,” which will appear in the 2008 edition.
She is the co-author of the Gil and Claire Hunt trilogy, the second book of which, THE MASKS OF AUNTIE LAVEAU (2002), was titled by the L.A. Times “a blueprint for how to write a thriller.” She recently edited DEADLY HOUSEWIVES, published by Avon/Morrow in April 2006. Her short story collection was called GENTLE INSANITIES AND OTHER STATES OF MIND (2001). In 2007 one of her short stories appeared in HOLLYWOOD AND CRIME: Original Crime Stories Set During the History of Hollywood. As Marthayn Pelegrimas she is also the author of the historical novel ON THE STRENGTH OF WINGS.
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Radine Trees Nehring
www.radinesbooks.com
Radine Trees Nehring has called Arkansas home since 1988. She began writing for publication in 1986, has many magazines and newspaper credits, and was a broadcast journalist with her own program about the Ozarks for ten years. Her writing has won numerous awards. Nehring's non-fiction book, Dear Earth: A Love Letter from Spring Hollow, published in 1995, won the Arkansas Governor's Award for best writing about the state. She is author of short stories and a mystery novel series set in Arkansas. Her first novel, A Valley To Die For, earned a Macavity nomination. Music To Die For, (set at the Ozark Folk Center, Mountain View, AR), appeared in 2003. Her third novel, A Treasure To Die For, takes place in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Her fourth series novel, A Wedding To Die For, set at the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs. A River to Die For , her fifth series novel released April 2008, is set in the Buffalo National River region.
Nehring is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Readers, International. She represents the State of Arkansas on the Board of Mystery Writers of America - Southwest.
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Michael Palmer
www.michaelpalmerbooks.com
Michael Palmer, MD, began his writing career while working full time at his day job; practicing emergency medicine.
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, he majored in biology and Russian before going on to earn his medical degree with honors from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. He went on to co-found a free clinic in Cincinnati, and then established a private practice in internal medicine.
His first book, The Sisterhood, was published in 1982. It became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. Nearly every one of his twelve subsequent novels have also graced the bestsellers list, and his fourth, Extreme Measures, was made into a movie staring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Palmer’s knowledge of medicine frequently comes into play in his work. His newest book, published in February of 2008, features a small town doctor suddenly thrust into the position of physician to the President of the United States after his predecessor disappears under mysterious circumstances. His plots are fast moving and filled interesting and accurate details that keep readers turning the pages and looking forward to his next new book.
When he is not writing, Michael Palmer continues to work as Associate Director of Massachusetts Medical Society Physician Health Services. He also finds time for Tournament Bridge (Current rank: Bronze Life Master), Scuba diving, martial arts, and helping the youngest of his three sons get through his senior year of high school.
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Robert J. Randisi
Robert J. Randisi has been published in the western, mystery, horror, science fiction and men’s adventure genres. All told, he is the author of close to 500 novels, 50 short stories and the editor of 30 anthologies. He has also edited a Writer’s Digest book, WRITING THE PRIVATE EYE NOVEL, and for 7 years was the mystery reviewer for the Orlando Sentinel. In 1982 he founded the Private Eye Writers of America, and created the Shamus Award. In 1985 he co-founded Mystery Scene Magazine and the short-lived American Mystery Award; a couple of years later he was co-founder of the American Crime Writer’s League, all with Ed Gorman. In 1993 he was awarded a Life Achievement Award at the Southwest Mystery Convention. In the Western genre he is the creator and author of The Gunsmith series, which has been appearing monthly since January of 1982.
Randisi was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., and from 1973 through 1981 he was a civilian employee of the New York City Police Department, working out of the 67th Precinct in Brooklyn. After 41 years in N.Y, he now resides in Clarksville, Mo., an Artisan community of 500 people located right on the Mississippi River. He lives and works with writer Marthayn Pelegrimas, in a house overlooking the Mississippi.
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Grif Stockley
Grif Stockley is an author, historian, and attorney known for his lifelong commitment to the cause of civil rights. Although Stockley has been honored over the years for his legal achievements, his books have garnered him the widest recognition. His five Gideon Page novels became popular in the 1990s. Noteworthy in their own right, his legal mysteries are also an outward expression of Stockley’s own personal and political beliefs. In 2001, he published a finely researched historical account of the Elaine Massacre, titled Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919. In 2002 Stockley was awarded the Booker Worthen prize, a prestigious award established by local authors for works of nonfiction. Continuing with the civil rights theme, Stockley published, in 2005, Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas through the University Press of Mississippi. In his latest book, Race Relations in the Natural State, published by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in 2007, he presents a clear depiction of the struggles of race and class and Arkansas, using personal stories to give a deeper understanding of the price of racism in Arkansas. The last chapter explores the experiences of Hispanics in the state.
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Allison Wallace
www.allisonwallace.com
Allison Wallace hails from the piney woods of southeastern Louisiana, in the upper toe of the “boot,” right on the Pearl River and about an hour’s drive from New Orleans. Having spent her childhood there and along coastal Texas and Mississippi, she went on to attend the University of Mississippi and later the University of North Carolina, where she completed doctoral work in American literature in 1992. Her first full-time faculty post, at Unity College in central Maine, lasted nine years, where she taught interdisciplinary humanities courses in the literature and history of the American land. All those cold, bitter New England springs (not the winters, which were wonderful) eventually moved her to trace her way back South, via the Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas, where she has been since the fall of 2001—minus a half year spent on a Fulbright grant at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan. As time permits, she enjoys reading, writing, hiking, canoeing, traveling, gardening, and—of course!—keeping honeybees. Her widely-acclaimed A Keeper of Bees: Notes on Hive and Home, was released by Random House in 2006 to much critical acclaim. Food and farming, as well as the art of the essay, remain her personal and professional passions.
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Barbara Youree
www.barbarayouree.com
Barbara Youree is a freelance writer who resides in Rogers, Arkansas. She began writing following a teaching career in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Kansas. She served as a docent at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, for six years and as Contributing Editor of Potpourri: A Magazine of the Literary Arts for eight. She has written a series of Christian romances for Heartsong Presents and six children’s books for Beacon Hill Press.
Her many magazine articles have appeared in such diverse publications as Fate, True Reports of the Strange amp; Unknown; Miracles Magazine; Mature Living; and Spider, the Magazine for Children. She has just finished a creative non-fiction book about two refugees from the civil war in Sudan: Seeds of the New Sudan: Walking the Lost Boys Journey. It is being published by New Horizon Press and will be out in September 2008.
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David Zimmermann
David Zimmermann was conceived during the time of the first atomic bomb testing and born in March 1946, two facts he finds riveting.
He started writing poetry at 15 and has never stopped. Boxes and boxes of his poems are scribbled on scraps of paper, tucked safely away from miscreants and scholars in a friend's attic. Names for the Known, released in 1988 and currently out of print, was his first book of poems.
Zimmermann co-wrote, with Jacqueline Froelich, Total Eclipse: The Destruction of the African American Community of Harrison, Arkansas, in 1905 and 1909. Tedious and thorough research resulted in the two winning the Violet B. Gingles Award from the Arkansas Historical Quarterly in 1999 for the best paper on Arkansas history.
"I undertook the project so that the last surviving African-American from the influx of tourist industry workers in Eureka Springs, Nigger Rich, would have his day in court," Zimmermann said. "Nigger" Rich Banks, who had no enemies anyone can remember, died in 1975.
Zimmermann now writes poetry while standing at a podium so his publisher will be able to read his scrawl. Dissipated Assets was written from his bed (where he says he is most creative) requiring continual clarification.
He is thinking of writing a biography of Edward Carpenter, the vegetarian, sandal-wearing, openly gay English socialist poet and activist who provided genuine spiritual relief during the puritanical Victorian Age.
David Zimmermann has lived in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, since January 1971.
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Jeff Greenwald
Jeff Greenwald has traveled extensively through five continents, working as a writer, artist and photographer. He is the author of five best-selling travel books, including Shopping for Buddhas, The Size of the World (for which he created the first international blog), and Scratching the Surface: Impressions of Planet Earth from Hollywood to Shiraz. His stories and essays have appeared in various print and online publications—including The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and Salon.com. Jeff is also Executive Director of Ethical Traveler, a global alliance of travelers dedicated to human rights and environmental protection (www.ethicaltraveler.org).
July 2003 witnessed Jeff’s stage debut in Strange Stage Suggestions, an improvised monologue based on his adventures. The critically acclaimed show continues to draw sold-out houses. In January and February 2005 Jeff worked with Mercy Corps in Sri Lanka assisting victims of the tsunami. His dispatches are archived on the Ethical Traveler site.
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Steven Foster
Steven Foster is a medicinal and aromatic plant specialist, writer, lecturer, photographer, and the author of fifteen books on herbs, including National Geographic’s A Desk Reference to Nature’s Medicine (2006, with Rebecca Johnson), a 2007 New York Public Library “Best of Reference.” He is senior author of three Peterson Field Guides, including A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs (with Dr. James A. Duke), 2nd edition, 2000, A Field Guide to Western Medicinal Plants and Herbs with Christopher Hobbs, (2002), and A Field Guide to Venomous Animals and Poisonous Plants of North America (with Roger Caras, 1995). His 1999 book 101 Medicinal Herbs (Interweave Press) was named the best title in Health and Medicine in the Independent Publishers Book Award, and a Silver Medal in the Benjamin Franklin Books Awards.
Well-known for his photography, Foster offers America’s largest stock photo files of medicinal and aromatic plants available for commercial and editorial licensing with over 150,000 images. Foster has thousands of published photographs to his credit, in venues ranging from Martha Stewart Living to Arab Banker Magazine.
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