Vero Beak Book Festival

Appearances
11:45 am Community Center: Panel: “Book Reviews: Insight or Axe Grinding Opinions”
3:30 pm Community Center: Group Conversation: “Writers’ Talk”

Iowa City novelist Larry Baker’s 1997 book, Flamingo Rising, a coming-of-age tale set in Florida, won widespread acclaim and was made into a 2001 Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. In his novel, Athens, America, he draws on his experience as an Iowa City councilman. He is currently working on a new novel based in Florida, a comedy about The Second Coming. Baker has taught creative writing at the Iowa Summer Writers Festival, and is currently teaching American Literature and Culture of the Twentieth Century for the University of Iowa.

Appearance
11:45 am Community Center: Panel: “Book Reviews: Insight or Axe Grinding Opinions”

Website: http://opinion.tampabay.com/bancroft/

Colette learned to read when she was 3, later taught literature and writing at several universities for a decade, then worked at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson for 9 years before joining the staff of the St. Petersburg Times in 1997. She lives in the Tampa Bay area with her husband, John, and 43 yards of bookshelves.

Appearances
10:00 am Community Center: Panel: “Mysteries, Mysteries, Mysteries”
2:15 pm Heritage Center

Website: http://www.tedbellbooks.com

Ted Bell is the former Vice-Chairman of the Board and World-Wide Creative Director of Young and Rubicam, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. He is New York Times bestselling author of Hawke, Assassin, Pirate, and SPY and makes his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

"Sometimes, if you get very, very lucky, you get to do exactly what you wanted to do when you were just a kid. For me, that was writing. Writing stories, long and short. In the back seat of the old station wagon with the windows rolled up against the noise of siblings and neighborhood kids. Read nonstop. The professional writer's life began after a long mostly happy sojourn in the jetlag jungles of international advertising. I grew up in Florida, went to Virginia to a small college and majored in English. The school's unofficial motto was 'We can't all be scholars, but we can all be gentlemen.' After graduation, I worked for exactly 365 days in a bank (don't ask) and really, really disliked it. Later, I moved to Europe to be a writer, but mostly just to emulate Scott Fitzgerald who was and, I guess, is, my idol. I bounced around Italy, France, and in Rome, got cast as a cowboy in a spaghetti western that never got made, ran out of money and ideas at roughly the same time. In England, I wrote a young adult adventure novel. It's still my favorite book of mine. SPY will be my fifth novel. I started writing full time in 2000. And I've returned to Florida where, like it did on the day I was born, the sun still shines down all the livelong day." — Printed from Ted Bell's Website

Appearance
10:00 am Woman’s Club with Fredric Hitt

Websites
www.BillBelleville.com
www.Equinoxdocumentaries.org

Losing It All To Sprawl is the poignant chronicle of award-winning nature writer, Bill Belleville, and how he came to understand and love his historic Cracker farmhouse and “relic” neighborhood in central Florida, even as it was all wiped out from under him. His narrative is eloquent, informed, and impassioned, a saga in which tractors and backhoes trample through the woods next to his house in order to build the staple of Florida sprawl—the mall. In his book, he accounts for all the impacts—social, political, natural, personal—that a community in the crosshairs of unsustainable growth ultimately must bear, but he also offers Floridians, and anyone facing the blight of urban confusion, the hope that can be found in the rediscovery and appreciation of the natural landscape.

Bill Belleville is a veteran author and documentary filmmaker. He has written for such publications as Newsweek, New York Times, Syndicate, Audubon, Islands, Oxford America and Sierra. His work has been authologized in nine collections, including the recent Best Travel Writing 2006. His books include River of Lakes: A Journey on Florida’s St. Johns River, a recent pick of the prestigious annual Central Florida Reads selection. Other books include Deep Cuba: The Inside Story of an American Oceanographic Expedition and Sunken cities, Sacred Cenotes, and Golden Sharkes: Travels of a Water-Bound Adventurer. Belleville won an Emmy for the production and scripting of Wekiva: Legacy or Loss? He has lectured widely on environmental literature and was named environmental Writer of the Year by Florida Audubon Society and Florida Wildlife Federation. An avid kayaker, hiker, and diver, Belleville now lives in Sanford, Florida.

Appearance
11:00 am 14th Avenue Theatre Plaza

Website: www.JBBerkow.com

Painted Poetry is the first monograph on artist JB Berkow. Her work has been recognized by critics and collectors as being the best example of romantic realism being done today. JB’s works have been exhibited in many galleries, museums, and universities around the world, including the permanent collection of the Vatican Museum of Contemporary Art. Considering how realistic her paintings appear, it may surprise the viewer to learn that JB tends to think of her work as a ‘stringing together of abstractions’. As she explains,”My greatest joy comes when, after carefully assembling every one of these small abstract elements, they come together as an image of overall beauty prompting the viewer to want to escape in their completed puzzle of realistic illusion.”

Being a published author, JB has created distinctive poems to accompany the image of each painting, a body of work completed between 1992 and 2005. These verses vary in style and color to suit each painting and convey the artist’s sensuous feelings as well as her political and philosophical ideas connected to each subject. It also contains an extensive illustrated biographical section written by the Editor in Chief of ‘Art World News’ magazine, Ms. Sarah Seamark.

JB Berkow is an unusual combination of artist, entrepreneur, and mentor. She started painting seriously at age eleven and commenced her professional career at age twenty. Six years later, she founded one of the country’s most famous cooperatives, “Touchstone Gallery” in Washington D.C. Starting the cooperative and later a studio-gallery located in Juno Beach, Florida, where she currently resides, brought her into close proximity to scores of artists. Besides working with them on a daily basis in her studio, she was and still is very involved with the National Association of Women Artists, Florida Chapter. During her term of office as President of the organization, she initiated their first Scholarship Program. Helping fellow artists has always been a driving force in her life that she cannot fully explain, but being exposed to so many talented people who were stunted for one reason or another from where they wanted to be in their careers, made her frustrated enough to write this book. It took her over a period of six years and tons of research before it was completed. The book is a treasure trove of her own personal experiences, psychological insights, recounts of mistakes she has learned from, and all the necessary information that every artist needs to know and understand if they wish to become successful.

Appearance
10:00 am 14th Avenue Theatre Plaza

Website: www.laurelblossom.com

Laurel Blossom's book-length narrative prose poem, Degrees of Latitude, is due in November, 2007, from Four Way Books. Her most recent book is Wednesday: New and Selected Poems (Ridgeway Press, 2004). Earlier books include: The Papers Said, Any Minute (both Greenhouse Review Press), and What's Wrong (Cobham & Heatherton Press). Her work has appeared in, among others, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Pequod, The Paris Review, the Carolina Quarterly, Deadsnake Apotheosis, and Many Mountains Moving. She has recently completed a book-length poem, Degrees of Latitude, the first in a projected trilogy exploring a woman's search for her human coordinates in a difficult, multi-dimensional world. Blossom is the editor of Splash! Great Writing About Swimming (Ecco Press, 1996) and Many Lights in Many Windows: Twenty Years of Great Fiction and Poetry From the Writers Community (Milkweed, 1997). She has recently moved from New York City to Edgefield, S.C.

Appearances
10:00 am Community Center: Panel: “Mysteries, Mysteries, Mysteries”
3:15 pm Heritage Center

Website: www.jamesoborn.com

James O. Born is a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, where he is involved with a wide variety of criminal investigations, from public corruption and economic crimes to drug cartels, anti terrorism, and homicide. He is also a former member of the FDLE Special Operations Team, which has handled unusual situations such as hurricanes and the Miami riots. Before joining the FDLE he was a deputy marshal with the U.S. Marshals Service and an agent with the DEA. He also served as the technical consultant for the ABC television series Karen Sisco. Born lives in Lake Worth, Florida, where he is now at work on his fifth novel.

Appearance
10:00 am Heritage Center

Rick Bragg, author of the critically acclaimed and best-selling All Over but the Shoutin' and a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent for the New York Times, says he learned to tell stories by listening to the masters, the people of the foothills of the Appalachians. They talked, of the sadness, poverty, cruelty, kindness, hope, hopelessness, faith, anger and joy of their everyday lives, and painted pictures on the very haze of the early evening, when work faded into story-telling.

Bragg was born in Alabama, grew up there, and worked at several newspapers before joining the New York Times in 1994. He covered the murder and unrest in Haiti while a metro reporter there, then wrote about the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jonesboro killings, the Susan Smith trial and more as a national correspondent based in Atlanta. He later became Miami Bureau Chief for the Times just in time for Elian Gonzalez's arrival and the international battle for the little boy.

He has twice won the prestigious American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award, and more than 50 writing awards in his 20-year career. In 1992, he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. He has taught writing in colleges and in newspaper news rooms.

He is also the author of Somebody Told Me, a critically acclaimed collection of his newspaper stories.

Appearance
Thursday, Nov. 15 10:30 am McKee Botanical Garden: “Landscaping and Gardening: A Symposium”

Website: http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=BROWNS06

Whether you are just gaining an interest in perennials or have a long-time appreciation of them, this fourth book in the popular Your Florida Guide To… series will become a valuable gardening resource. Perennials provide extended seasons of color that enhance any landscape. With Your Florida Guide to Perennials you will recognize old favorites and be introduced to gorgeous new varieties to add to your garden’s plant palette.

Sydney Park Brown and Rick Schoellhorn combine 30 years horticulture experience, offering a variety of ways to select and enjoy perennials, such as fragrance, season of color, drought tolerance, shade tolerance, and wildlife attractants. They provide information not currently available to either consumers or industry professionals on perennial selection, use, and care. Over 250 perennials are featured in a user-friendly format that includes a plant identification color wheel, sidebars, and nearly 200 full-color photos for easy identification. Gingers, begonias, and salvias are given special treatment with pages devoted to these large and diverse plant groups. All the major climatic zones in Florida are covered along with success tips for each zone. Native species are noted.

Sydney Park Brown is a third generation Floridian and an avid gardener. As the Consumer Horticulture Specialist for University of Florida Extension, she provides educational resources to home gardeners. Sydney holds degrees in English literature, horticulture and agriculture from UF and a doctorate in Adult Ed from USF. She formerly held the position of Horticulture Agent and Master Gardener Coordinator for Hillsborough County Extension. Her book, Your Florida Guide to Perennials, was published in 2006.

Gotta-Grow-Em Perennials will showcase 20 perennials that are top performers for Florida gardeners. Some are newcomers to the market; others are old favorites. Design and maintenance tips for successful perennial gardening in Florida will also be presented.

Appearance
12:00 pm Woman’s Club

Website: www.rompthruconcepts.com

Chef Robert and his wife Barb, have been planning and having romantic dinners for the past 24 years. In this book, Chef Robert guides you with easy step by step instructions on how to prepare and cook these Romantic Dinners for Two. Choose a rendezvous, set the atmosphere, and follow his cookbook and DVD.

Attending Queens University he earned a Secondary School Certificate and a Certificate of Trade at Ontario Apprenticeship Branch. Chef Robert’s culinary experience began as a high school culinary instructor for 16 years, followed by 14 years in the hospitality and restaurant industry as a Chef, sous chef, and regional manager. He owned and operated a catering company for 2 years.

Barbara Catherine earned an interior decorator diploma/certificate, owned and operated an interior decoration business for 4 years. She also owned and operated a catering company and has been an interior decorator and in sales for 3 years.

Appearance
12:00 pm Courthouse Executive Center

Website: www.thenewretirement.net

The most comprehensive guide to planning for retirement is now completely revised and updated. It used to be that work ended at age 65 and life slowed to a predictable pace. Not anymore! From deciding where to live, what to do, when to do it, and more, The New Retirement will help readers plan for and achieve their retirement dreams.

The all-new revisions to this updated edition include:

• more than 30 new recommendations for specific communities to consider for retirement, plus updated home prices and cost-of-living figures for existing communities
• updated financial and tax information
• new niche lifestyles including club living, spa living, communities that are also cities, and moving where there is free land
• an updated travel section
• an expanded section on second homes

Filled with anecdotes and case studies, and organized in a highly effective format with surveys, questionnaires, and worksheets, this comprehensive book covers every aspect of planning an ideal retirement.

The New Retirement is recommended by AARP, the NEA (National Education Association), the Motley Fool, and it (the first edition) was chosen as a book club selection by Michelle Singletary ("Color of Money" columnist for The Washington Post). The first edition also reached the #2 ranking on both Amazon.com and B&N. com (right behind the previous Harry Potter!).

Jan Cullinane, an award-winning college professor and educator, is the Retirement Expert for the NABBW (National Association of Baby Boomer Women).

Cathy Fitzgerald has worked in a variety of educational settings. Both authors live in Florida. Jan and Cathy conduct retirement seminars through their company, Retirement Living from A to Z, and are often consulted by and quoted in national media on the subject of retirement.

Appearances
1:15 pm Woman’s Club

Website: www.timdorsey.com

Tim Dorsey was born in Indiana, moved to Florida at the age of 1, and grew up in Riviera Beach in Palm Beach County. He graduated from Auburn University in 1983 with a B.S. in Transportation. While at Auburn, he was editor of the student newspaper, The Plainsman.

From 1983 to 1987, he was a police and courts reporter for The Alabama Journal, the now-defunct evening newspaper in Montgomery. He joined The Tampa Tribune in 1987 as a general assignment reporter. He also worked as a political reporter in the Tribune’s Tallahassee bureau and a copy desk editor. From 1994 to 1999, he was the Tribune’s night metro editor and night news coordinator. He left the paper in August 1999 and has since had nine novels published in several languages: Florida Roadkill, Hammerhead Ranch Motel, Orange Crush, Triggerfish Twist, The Stingray Shuffle, Cadillac Beach, Torpedo Juice, The Big Bamboo, and Hurricane Punch. His tenth book, Atomic Lobster, will be released in early 2008. He lives in Tampa with his family. He is 46.

Appearances
Thursday, Nov. 15 4:20 pm Vero Beach Museum of Art: Panel: “Souls on Fire in the South”
Saturday, Nov. 17 12:00 pm 14th Avenue Theatre Plaza with Christopher Maurer

Cliff Edwards was born in Southampton, New York. He received the B.A. from Drew University in History, cum laude, in 1954. He received the M. Div. with Distinction from Garrett Theological Seminary in 1958, and the Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1963.

Professor Edwards studied as a Dempster Fellow at the University of Strasbourg in France and the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. He received a fellowship grant and studied and worked at an archaeological dig at Gezer in Israel, and lived and worked at Daitokuji Zen Monastery in Kyoto, Japan, as a Great Religions Fund Fellow. Columbia University’s Avery Fine Arts Library at Columbia University in New York.

Prof. Edwards has taught at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, and is currently a faculty member for The School of World Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.

Professor Edwards has written several books, including Christian Being and Doing, Everything Under Heaven, Issa: The Story of a Poet-Priest, Van Gogh and God, and The Shoes of Van Gogh. For several years he edited The Wesleyan Quarterly Review, and is currently on the editorial board of Menorah Review.

Professor Edwards has been appointed a VCU Board of Visitors Teaching Fellow, has received the Commonwealth of Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award, the VCU Inaugural Award for Multicultural Enrichment, a Ford Foundation Teaching Grant, a resident fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Humanities, and two Coolidge Fellowships.

Appearances
10:00 am Community Center: Panel: “Mysteries, Mysteries, Mysteries”
1:15 pm Heritage Center
3:30 pm Community Center: Group Conversation: “Writers’ Talk”

Website: www.maryannaevans.com

Mary Anna Evans has degrees in physics and engineering, but her heart is in the past. Her series character, Faye Lonchamp, lives the exciting life of an archaeologist, and Mary Anna envies her a little. Her first novel, Artifacts, won the Benjamin Franklin award for best mystery published by a small press. It also won the Florida Historical Society’s Florida Literature Award, and it was named by the Voice of Young America as an “Adult Mystery with Young Adult appeal”. Mary Anna is proud of being recognized for writing a page-turner for people of all ages, while, at the same time, getting the historical facts right. Her second novel, Relics, was an independent Mystery Booksellers Association bestseller, and it was nominated for the Southeastern independent booksellers Alliance’s SIBA Book Award.

Mary Anna turned from engineering to fiction after the birth of her third child prompted a shift in focus from managing hazardous wastes to preparing balanced meals. She has yet to acquire the knack of laundry management. Mary Ann lives with her husband, 3 children, about 20 musical instruments, and a cat.

Appearance
1:15 pm 14th Avenue Theatre Plaza

Website: www.gddfletcher.com

"For several years, I struggled with the possibility of developing a series of paintings on Black writers. My desire was to move beyond traditional portraiture and capture the essence of the writing itself. To achieve this goal, I needed to explore the lives of these writers not only through their fiction and/or poetry, but through their speeches, essays, and interviews as well as the biographical information available. Each of the resulting portraits is a composite of the writer’s life experiences, work habits, struggles, passions, and, I hope, final achievements. Although each painting stands on its own, the series as a whole represents the Black experience of oppression, resistance, and relentless search for identity and home. The story of these writers is our story; the long journey they undertook to become not just black writers but writers acknowledged by the entire literary community embodies our journey to recover our rightful place in the world. From Ralph Ellison to Toni Morrison, from Amiri Baraka to Maya Angelou, these writers all use language that is different in context yet connected in struggle. As painterly counterparts of that language, the portraits inevitably share several symbols, among them water (the river), fire, music, and light. Thus, the brightness that flares behind John Edgar Wideman and swirls around Ishmael Reed recalls the candle that burns persistently at the edge of Zora Neale Hurston’s portrait. As an outsider looking in, I listened to the writer’s voice and found it was not so different from my own. I quickly discovered that the inspiration that drove these writers was mine, that their creative process paralleled my experience as I prime a canvas and begin to paint. In the end, we are all connected, coming together to tell our story of love, family, community, struggle, and, most importantly, survival. "Painted Voices: An Artist’s Journey into the World of Black Writers” is a celebration of the writers who dedicated their lives to telling this story in their writing". — Gilbert Fletcher

Gilbert Fletcher lives and works in New York, and has exhibited in the New Orleans Museum of Art, the African American Museum in Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cinque University and at several colleges and universities around the country. He has a MA in Art Education from Dillard University and a MA in Art and Design from Pratt Institute.

His most recent series is the acclaimed Painted Voices: an Artist’s Journey in to the World of Black Writers which is a compilation of 28 portraits of the world’s most celebrated writers of our time. He lectures on the series which has been touring colleges and universities since 1998.

Appearance
11:45 am Community Center: Panel: “Book Reviews: Insight or Axe Grinding Opinions”

Website: www.bookcritics.org

John Freeman is president of the National Book Critics Circle. His reviews, essays and interviews have appeared in more than 170 newspapers and magazines around the world including The Guardian. The New York Times Book Review, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Believer. He lives in New York.

Appearances:
Thursday, Nov. 15, 4:30 pm Vero Beach Museum of Art: Panel: “Souls on Fire in the South”
Saturday, Nov, 17, 3:15 pm 14th Avenue Theatre Presentation of LRJ’s "To Let Be and Let Do: Laura (Riding) Jackson in Florida"

Laura (Riding) Jackson (1901-1991), was a celebrated modernist poet and twentieth century literary figure who spent over half of her long life in a small “cracker” house in Wabasso, Florida. After her death, a group of citizens in nearby Vero Beach established the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation, for the purpose of maintaining her house and supporting the work of other writers. The subject of Elizabeth Friedmann’s novel-like biography, (Riding) Jackson has sometimes been represented as amoral and absolutist, but Friedmann makes a good case for the interior logic and basic morality of her life’s choices. This biography – 10 years of in the making, and using the resources of more than 40 libraries – is a work of devotion and rectification. Friedmann has edited a companion volume of selections from (Riding) Jackson’s fiction, theory, essays and poetry. Examples from reviews:

Through the grace and clarity of Friedmann’s biography we begin to see the simple heroic courage of Laura (Riding) Jackson…Mark Jacobs, English (U.K.)

Friedmann’s painstaking efforts to reveal the “inner consistency” of Laura (Riding) Jackson’s thought yield a biography that sheds clarifying light on one of Americans letters’ most elusive figures. Laura Scholl, Chicago Tribune

(Riding) Jackson was a great light of 20th century American and British literature, first as a modernist poet, than as critic, author, and scholar of the language itself…this is a brilliant biography, scholarly in content, elegant in execution. Ann Hyman, Florida Times-Union

Elizabeth Friedmann is a former adjunct professor of English at Jacksonville University, the founding editor of Kalliope: a Journal of Women’s Art and a former reporter and features writer for the Times-Union.

Appearances
10:00 am Community Center: Panel: “Mysteries, Mysteries, Mysteries”
4:15 pm Heritage Center

Website: www.david-hagberg.com

The CIA is on edge. All signs indicate that something is coming at the United States. Perhaps another 9/11, maybe bigger. The body of CIA agent Louis Updegraf ends up on the steps of the US Embassy in Mexico. His last operation was to tap into the communications of the Chinese Embassy, but there is no record of why. He appeared to be freelancing and the Agency must scramble to get a clue as to what he was after. Kirk McGarvey, serving as a visiting professor at the University of Florida, is once again longing for the action of the field. So when his old friend Otto Rencke asks him to help figure out the connection between China and the murdered agent, it takes almost no effort to get McGarvey up and running. The only informant they can find is an enigmatic Iranian belly dancer—the dark and lovely Shahrzad Shadmand. But her story changes with the wind, and her knowledge of McGarvey's past is uncanny. Kirk McGarvey must unravel her shattered mind to get to something that might resemble the truth.

David Hagberg is a former Air Force cryptographer, who has traveled extensively in Europe, the Artic, and the Caribbean, and has spoken at CIA functions. He has published more than 20 novels of suspense, including the best-selling High Flight, Assassin, and Joshua’s Hammer. He makes his home in Sarasota, Florida.

Appearance
10:00 am Woman’s Club with Bill Belleville

Website: www.Fredricmhitt.com

Wekiva Winter, winner of the Patrick D. Smith Award for Best Fiction 2006 by the Florida Historical Society

Fredric M. Hitt lives on the River of the Sun. In modern times it is called the St. Johns River, and flows northward through Central Florida until it reaches the Atlantic Ocean near Jacksonville. He shares his love of the river with earlier inhabitants who disappeared from the face of the earth three hundred years before he was born. From his dock he can see where the river the Seminoles called Wekiva enters the St. Johns. “Wekiva” means “waters of the spring.” It is the spring-fed tributary the Timucua might call “hachanamoyo-ibi-ca-re” which means “where the rivers meet”.

Fredric Hitt has been published with his stories of the river, its history and its ecology in traditional and internet magazines. His stories have appeared in Going Places, the AAA magazine, Finest Fishing.com and other magazines. This is his first novel. His second novel, soon to be released, Beyond the River of the Sun, is the sequel to Wekiva Winter, and is the dramatic story leading up to the revolt by the Timucua Indians against the Spanish government of La Florida in 1656.

Hitt graduated with a degree in Journalism from the University of Florida. He received his law degree from the University of Miami. After twenty years as a trial judge he has retired and returned to his first love, writing. He lives with his wife, wildlife artist, Linda Silsby Hitt, who painted the cover of Wekiva Winter.

Appearance
12:00 pm Heritage Center
1:45 pm Community Center: Panel: “Publishing Political Books in the era of George W. Bush”

Website: www.cjr.org

Reviews: "Never in the fifty years that I have been in or around the news business have I read a better record of a historic event than this." — Reese Schonfeld, founding president of CNN

This should be required reading in every journalism class from high school to graduate school." — James W. Crawley, president of Military Reporters and Editors

Following in the footsteps of best-selling books about the war, Reporting Iraq is a fully illustrated narrative history of the war by the world's best-known reporters and photojournalists. Included are contributions from fifty journalists, including Dexter Filkins (the New York Times correspondent who won widespread praise for his coverage of Fallujah), Rajiv Chandrasekaran (author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City), Anthony Shadid (the Washington Post reporter awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his Iraq reporting), and Patrick Cockburn (from London's Independent).

In this, the first book to tell the history of the war through the end of 2006, the deadliest period of conflict, we learn that most journalists saw a disaster in Iraq before they were allowed to report it. This revelation, along with hundreds of untold first-person stories, makes Reporting Iraq a fascinating look at the war and an important critique of international press coverage.

Reporting Iraq is published in conjunction with the Columbia Journalism Review, America's premier media monitor and watchdog of the press in all its forms, from newspapers and magazines to radio, television, wire services, and the web.

Mike Hoyt is Executive Editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. Hoyt attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism. His first job was at the Charleston, Missouri, Enterprise-Gazette, followed by the Home News, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, The record, in Bergen County, New Jersey, and Business Week. He was a free-lance magazine writer for a number of years. At Columbia Journalism Review, Hoyt was associate editor and senior editor prior to his appointment as Executive Editor in 2000.

Appearance
2:15 pm Courthouse Executive Center with sister Sena Jeter Naslund

Jon Bernier returns to rural Alabama to tidy up family plots in a cemetery. Ruminations of his first love, a concert pianist, are shattered when he discovers her memorial stone. Clandestine international pharmaceutical concerns, coupled with government illegalities, are unexpectedly revealed, offering Jon a possible reprise as he learns that broken links of lives have a chance to be re-connected.

My degrees in mathematics and engineering led to high detail in my writing. My style, I think, hearkens back to the 1940’s and 1950’s. My slightly younger sister and I would revel in the telling of stories, mostly cowboy, as I rode my great white blanketed piano bench and she, her smaller pinto pony, disguised as a dresser bench, through many an adventure. Straps from a binocular case and our mother’s purse made for high and elegant reins. Many of those talks were kept alive in our loose-leaf notebook newspaper, as we recorded stories of desperadoes, the derring-do of our horse-borne persona, pioneers caring for their families, and numerous other adventures that fame from our minds high above the arabesques of the living room carpet. Through cartoon-like drawings I served as the chief illustrator.

Many of those talks were kept alive in our loose-leaf notebook newspaper, as we recorded stories of desperadoes, the derring-do of our horse-borne persona, pioneers caring for their families, and numerous other adventures that came from our minds high above the arabesques of the living room carpet. Through cartoon-like drawings I served as the chief illustrator.

Years later my sister, the noted author Sena Jeter Naslund, told me that she was certain that memory and imagination were next-door neighbors in the mind. In my novel…and the angels sang, there are a few literal memories, some memories that transport into imagination, and some fanciful (or farcical) flights of imagination. The sections are devoted to three loves of my life: the wonders of music, poetry, and nature.”

John Sims Jeter is the older brother of novelist Sena Jeter Naslund, the author of the magnificent Ahab’s Wife, and, most recently, Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette. The Jeters grew up in Birmingham, Sena attending Birmingham-Southern and Iowa while John went to Howard College and UAB. John Jeter has spent his career as a mathematician and engineer, until recently. John, now a resident of Huntsville, took up fiction writing in 1999. …..and the angels sang is his first novel.

Appearance
1:45 pm Community Center: Panel: “Publishing Political Books in the era of George W. Bush”

Website: www.mhpbooks.com

Dennis Johnson is the publisher of Melville House and named the “2007 Independent Publisher of the Year” by the Association of American Publishers. He has published Mark Danner, Donna Brazile, Jacques Derrida, Bern-Henry Levy, Howard Dean, and the then-prime minister of France, Dominque de Villepin.

Johnson has been profiled in the NYTimes as the proprietor of the first well-known book blog, MobyLives.com. His book, The Big Chill, is crisp, “telling details capture the scenes of violence between the police and protestors, the sharpshooters lining the roofs, the ominous chants of the group known as the Black Bloc, the wacky protest signs, and the diversity of ages and backgrounds represented by the protestors. Johnson has won awards from the NEA and Pushcart Prize series for his fiction writing, and appears regularly on programs such as Charlie Rose, BookTV, and National Public Radio discussing book culture. Johnson’s publishing career grew out of his experience with his website, and what the future holds for the intersection of the Internet and publishing is a topic that much interests him.

Appearance
3:15 pm Courthouse Executive Center

Blood Sisters follows the life of three girls and their families from the age of 13 to 21 during the 1960s. The twist is that it is set mainly in Kenya - after the Mao-mao, and just as Kenya gained its independence, which takes it from intriguing to fascinating! The descriptions of Kenya, the wildlife and the countryside are amazing. It focuses mainly on the developing characters of the three girls, showing their joys and miseries. It highlights the differences and similarities in their characters.

A Durable Fire, its sequel, and the 2nd novel in this trilogy, takes place in the first years of Kenyan independence and finds the three young women returning to the East African highlands where they shared a carefree childhood. Hannah is struggling to preserve her heritage at Langani Farm, where a series of unexplained and violent attacks threaten her security and recent marriage. Sarah is studying elephant behavior in an area made dangerous by armed poachers, using her work as a salve for the death of her childhood sweetheart. Camilla, the international fashion icon, abandons her career in London and is drawn back to Kenya by her love for a charismatic hunter and safari guide. But, there is a secret that hangs over Langani, overshadowing their efforts to establish themselves in the volatile circumstances of a new African nation. With the help of an ambitious Indian journalist, the three girls gradually uncover the truth about the murder of Sarah's fiancé, and the continuing attacks on the farm and on their lives. The passions and hardships experienced by these unforgettable heroines, united again in their friendship and their love for the country of their childhood, make a magnificent, epic novel. This sequel to Blood Sisters, confronts catastrophic loss and delirious happiness, savagery and degradation, limitless beauty, soaring hope and redemption.

Stephanie and Barbara Keating grew up in Kenya. One sister now lives in France, and the other in Dublin.

Appearances
11:45 am Community Center: Panel: "Book Reviews: Insight or Axe Grinding Opinions"
3:15 pm Woman’s Club

Blog site: www.arts.gov/bigreadblog

The Schreiber Theory: A Radical Rewrite of American Film History, where he makes the case that screenwriters, rather than directors, are the primary authors of their movies. The Daily Telegraph said of The Schreiber Theory, "Kipen may have signaled a tipping point, a time in movie history when the importance of story, rather than visual trickery or state-of-the art special effects, reasserts itself." Previously book critic and book editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, David has worked as a literary and film journalist for over fifteen years, writing for the Atlantic Monthly, the Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Boxoffice, and World Policy Journal, among others. An Angeleno by birth, he currently lives in Washington, DC, aboard a leaky houseboat on the Potomac.

David Kipen joined the National Endowment for the Arts in September 2005 as the Director of Literature. Among his responsibilities, Mr. Kipen leads the agency’s national leadership initiatives in literature, including the Big Read and Poetry Out Loud. He also oversees the review process for literature applications.

As one of America’s leading book and movie critics, Kipen was the book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle where he reviewed six to eight books each month. He was also a book critic and essayist for National Public Radio’s Day to Day and presented Santa Monica station KCRW-FM’s weekly commentary and podcast Overbooked. Prior to working with the Chronicle, Kipen was the senior editor of Buzz magazine, editing and helping to write the “What’s the Buzz?” section about his native Southern California. He reviews movies regularly for The Bob Edwards Show on XM Satellite Radio. Kipen received his bachelor’s degree in literature from Yale University in 1985.

Appearance
4:15 pm Woman’s Club

Website: www.eliotkleinberg.com

You've been warned! In 1998, the world reeled from the chaos, the madness, the outright horror of Weird Florida. This demonic collection of stories included the tales of the Key West necrophiliac, the haunted airliner, and the Perdido Key mullet toss. Audiences were unable to resist the lurid lure of this fantastic tome and snapped it up in droves.

Over the next eight years, more and more tales of the bizarre marched across the headlines like zombies staggering through the Florida swamp. The presidential recount. Elian. And the town that banned Satan. Crowds overturned trash cans and smashed plate glass windows until the creators of Weird Florida surrendered and produced Weird Florida II: In a State of Shock.

Cows in the Intracoastal Waterway? A bloodsucking night creature on the loose in Miami? The Virgin Mary on a cheese sandwich? Nationally known talk show host high on drugs? The mayor of one small town who banned Satan? The mayor of another small town who campaigned on a platform of "hot loins?" Yep! All this and more too! It's all in Eliot Kleinberg's Weird Florida II In a State of Shock.

Now the publishers of "WF2" are reissuing the original Weird Florida. Now children who weren't yet born the first time around can experience the same revulsion and disgust as their parents. People who kept this important work in their water closets until it fell apart can now restock. And disc jockeys in desperate need of filler can again shamelessly steal these amazing tales. AND IT'S ALL TRUE!

Eliot Kleinberg, a Florida native, has written nine books, all of them focusing on Florida. He is a member of the Florida, South Florida and Palm Beach County historical societies. He was born in Coral Gables in 1956, graduated the Miami-area public schools in 1974, and received two degrees from the University of Florida. His career as a radio and television reporter and editor, from 1979 to 1984, included work in Miami and at the Cable News Network. He was a reporter for The Dallas Morning News from 1984 until 1987, when he returned to Florida. Since then, he has been a news and features writer for the Palm Beach Post. He lives at Casa Floridiana in Boca Raton with his wife and two sons.

Appearance
11:45 am Community Center: Panel: "Book Reviews: Insight or Axe Grinding Opinions"

Chauncey Mabe grew up in Southwest Virginia, where he fell in love with reading in order to learn more about dinosaurs, little suspecting he'd eventually become one himself. A fiercely proud autodidact, he always says he learned everything school had to teach him by the fourth grade, after which he shifted his educational attention to the library. His hero is George Bernard Shaw, who once declared that his biggest achievement was never working an honest day after the age of 20. Mabe feels the same way, as journalism is far too much fun to be considered work. Following an indifferent collegiate career at three separate institutions, he dropped out as a fifth-year sophomore to take a job as assistant to the women's page editor at the Daily Banner of Cleveland,Tenn., where, a few months later he was appointed police reporter and discovered his life's calling. He went on to the Jupiter Courier-Journal, the Palm Beach Evening-Times, and the Palm Beach Post. He came to the Sun-Sentinel in 1986, after a short stint of magazine editing with the now-defunct Halsey Publishing Co. of North Miami. For nearly 20 years, Mabe has written book reviews and literary features as the Sun-Sentinel's books editor. He's also written general cultural criticism, and helps out with TV, movies, and popular music, especially country-&-western, which, with its penchant for story songs, he considers the most literary of all musical genres.

Appearance
11:00 am Heritage Center
3:30 pm Community Center: Group Conversation: “Writers’ Talk”

Baghdad just after the invasion: a chaotic scene of nervous soldiers, cowering civilians, prowling profiteers, and insurgents blowing up everything they can. Meanwhile, headquartered in the former palace of Saddam Hussein, the American diplomats trying to control it all are in frenzy: Where are the WMDs? Enter Robin Slate, a charming consultant for the US rebuilding effort, with an idea. How much would those bureaucrats pay to preserve the reputation of their beloved POTUS (security shorthand for President of the United States? That is, how much would they pay for a fake WMD?

And so begins the biggest scam of them all, as Slate assembles a mismatched band of conspirators, including a jaded CNN reporter, a disgruntled weapons inspector, and an Iraqi soccer star. Together, they navigate the wartime insanities: Saddam’s stockpiles of his unsold romance novels; his son Uday’s secret love nest complete with Michael Jackson costumes; the ambassador-he’s unqualified but looks good on TV-and his ambitious assistant who will stop at nothing to deliver WMDs to her hero, POTUS.

Written by the man who covered Ambassador Paul Bremer in Iraq for TIME Magazine, HOCUS POTUS is rich in real-life details and thinly veiled portrayals. It’s also a hysterically irreverent and masterfully crafted antiwar novel that will keep you guessing to the end. Malcolm MacPherson is a former longtime correspondent for TIME and NEWSWEEK Magazines.

Appearances
Thursday, Nov. 15 4:20 pm Vero Beach Museum of Art: Panel: "Souls on Fire in the South"
Saturday, Nov. 17 12:00 pm 14th Avenue Theatre Plaza with Cliff Edwards

Websites
www.walteringlisanderson.com
www.walterandersonmuseum.org

Walter Anderson (1903-1965) was a prolific, fiercely individual artist renowned for his matchless style, his lonely independence, and his astonishingly creative works of art. Devoted to the beauty of the natural world, Anderson emblazoned the events of his everyday life into art that expressed a unique an absorbing vision.

This compelling biography, published in celebration of his centennial, draws on Anderson’s voluminous journals and graphic works, the previously unpublished papers of family members and friends, and archival materials from several American museums.

In his creative diversity he was both an artist and a naturalist who left the art world hundreds of paintings, prints, murals, journals, wood carvings, ceramic works, poems, aphorisms, and some ten thousand pen-and-ink illustrations of literary works. Despite poverty and mental anguish, Anderson called himself “Fortunes Favorite Child”. Few artists have been more grateful than Anderson for the moments of artistic truth extracted from adversity, isolation and illness.

In tracing a life that the artist himself regarded with gratitude and wonder, this biography recounts the story of Anderson’s marriage and fatherhood, his bouts with illness, his creative periods of astonishing work, and his spells as a solitary rover expressing his artistic vision and searching for spiritual fulfillment.

Christopher Maurer, Professor of Spanish, Chair, Department of Romance Studies at Boston University, is the author (with Maria Estrella Iglesias) of Dreaming In Clay on the Coast of Mississippi: Love and Art at Shearwater; Baltasar Gracian: The Art of Worldly Wisdom and Salvador Dali/Federico Garcia Lorca: Sebastian’s Arrows. His work has appeared in the New Republic, the New York Times, Hispanic Review and El Pais (Madrid).

Appearance
2:15 pm Woman’s Club

Website: www.Rickmonday.com

It took something truly remarkable to save the 1981 Major League Baseball season from being remembered only as the year of the players’ strike. It took the Los Angeles Dodgers: Fernandomania and Sorda and Garv and Bake and the Penguin. It took three amazing October comebacks to beat the Houston Astros, the Montreal Expos and, finally, the New York Yankees, avenging Dodger World Series losses to the Yankees in 1977 and 1978. Rick Monday was right in the middle of that magical Dodger season. His recollections and conversations with teammates provide a behind-the-scenes view of one of the most amazing teams and seasons in baseball history in Rick Monday's Tales from the Dodgers Dugout.

Rick Monday is a former center fielder in Major League Baseball and is currently a broadcast announcer. From 1966 through 1984, Monday, a center fielder for most of his career, played for the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics (1966-71), Chicago Cubs (1972 – 76) and Los Angeles Dodgers (1977 – 84). He batted and threw left handed. In a 19-season career, Monday compiled a .264 batting average with 241 home runs and 775 RBI’s. He was selected an All-Star in 1968 and 1978.

Soon after his retirement as a player, Monday became a broadcaster for the Dodgers. He began in 1985 by hosting the pregame show and calling play-by-play on cable TV. From 1989-92, Monday moved further south to call San Diego Padres games alongside Jerry Coleman, replacing outgoing announcer Dave Campbell. He was also a sports anchor at KYYV for a time in the 1980s. In addition he served as a color commentator for CBS-TV at the College World Series championship game in 1988. Monday rejoined the Dodgers in 1993 (replacing the late Don Drysdale), and as of 2004 is one of the primary play-by-play announcers, calling most of the Dodgers’ radio broadcasts. Monday, since 2005, has handled mostly the analyst role, with Charley Steiner handling most of the play-by-play, except during road trips outside the National League West Division, in which Steiner broadcasts the game on television.

Appearance
Friday, Nov. 16 11:30 am Richardson Center IRCC "Lunch with The Author: Sena Jeter Naslund"
Saturday, Nov 17 2:15 pm Courthouse Executive Center with brother, John Jeter

Website: www.senajeternaslund.com

"Like everyone, I was born naked." With this opening line of Naslund's compelling new novel Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette, a very human Marie Antoinette invites readers to live her story as she herself experiences it. From the lush gardens of Versailles to the lights and gaiety of Paris, the verdant countryside of France, and finally the stark and terrifying isolation of a prison cell, the young queen's life is joyful, poignant, and harrowing by turns. As her world of unprecedented royal splendor crumbles, the charming Marie Antoinette matures into a heroine of inspiring stature, one whose nobility arises not from the circumstance of her birth but from her courageous spirit.

Sena Jeter Naslund is Writer in Residence at the University of Louisville, program director of the Spalding University brief-residency MFA in Writing, and current Kentucky Poet Laureate. Recipient of the Harper Lee Award and the Southeastern Library Association Fiction Award, she is editor of The Louisville Review and the Fleur-de-Lis Press. She is the author of the novels Ahab's Wife, Four Spirits, and Sherlock in Love and a collection of stories, The Disobedience of Water. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Appearances
Thursday, Nov. 15 10:30 am McKee Botanical Garden: "Landscaping and Gardening: A Symposium"
Saturday, Nov. 17 2:15 pm 14th Avenue Theatre Plaza

In 1995 a group of Vero Beach citizens mobilized as the Indian River Land Trust to rescue the McKee Jungle Garden property. In the years since, the garden has become a regional cause célèbre. History buffs worked toward preserving the architecture of the Spanish Kitchen and the Hall of Giants, a meeting/dining hall built from Florida heart pine. A grant from the state Division of Historical Resources was used to restore the circa-1941 buildings.

Over the years, gardeners have restored some of the hundreds of varieties of water lilies that used to grow there along with the prize-winning orchids. The original garden was designed by William Lyman Phillips, the most noted landscaper of his day, also known for designing Fairchild Tropical Gardens in Dade County and Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales. Phillips’ original drawings were used in the restoration.

The garden started as a Florida east coast hammock with a mix of oaks, mulberries and cabbage palms. Founders Arthur McKee and Waldo Sexton planned to use the land for a citrus grove, and then fell in love with its natural beauty. They established a nursery first, and then decided to make a jungle out of it by interplanting the native vegetation with some exotics from the tropics. The unique diversity of plant life has remained, and there are many species a visitor can see in just an hour that would otherwise require a world tour. Six champion trees call the garden home, along with centuries-old oaks that predate Florida’s statehood. The Audubon Society has counted 30 to 35 bird species in the garden’s canopy. “People would have to go to Borneo or South America or Africa to see what they can see here,” In the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, it was like going to a jungle, only in Florida. Suzan Phillips, who was vice president of the Indian River Land Trust, was one of many UF master gardeners playing a role in the restoration. In leading tours and activism to preserve the garden they found a little different niche than master gardeners in other communities.

Phillips remembers the garden from visits as a little girl. “There were monkeys on harnesses swinging through the trees and Old Mac, the alligator, who was so old he was allowed to roam free. Otters played in the pools, and when you left they gave you a glass of sulphur water that everyone seemed to drink even though it was so smelly,” Phillips said. “A Florida hammock is a very special place, and there are so few left,” Phillips said. “This really is Old Florida, but with plants mixed in that you can’t see anywhere else.”

Appearances
Thursday, Nov. 15 4:20 pm Vero Beach Museum of Art: Panel: “Souls on Fire in the South”
Saturday, Nov. 17 12:00 pm 14th Avenue Theatre Plaza with Christopher Maurer

From All Things Considered, September 18, 2005 • Since the 1920s, a family of artists have made their home at Shearwater, a complex overlooking Mississippi's Biloxi Bay. Perhaps most famous is the late Walter Inglis Anderson, known for vibrant watercolors of Gulf Coast landscapes. His two brothers were potters, and a fourth generation of the family carries on the Shearwater pottery tradition.

Hurricane Katrina swept through Shearwater, taking out nine family homes and six other buildings, and severely damaging a pottery workshop that had been in operation since 1928.

Mary Anderson Pickard, one of Walter Anderson's four children, was among those who lost a Shearwater home. Since then, she and her family members have dug though broken shards of decorative pottery, hoping to salvage what they can.

Some of Walter Anderson's work is housed at a museum in Ocean Springs, Miss., that survived the storm. But the family's treasured private collection... full of writings, paintings and linoleum blocks... was kept at Shearwater in a special vault. And it didn't fare as well.

Appearance
1:45 pm Community Center: Panel: "Publishing Political Books in the era of George W. Bush"

Colin Robinson worked at Faber, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Verso and The New Press before taking his present job as senior editor at Scribner. Authors he has worked with include Mike Davis, Christopher Hitchens, Lewis Lapham, Rigoberta Menchu, Alexander Cockburn and Edward Said.

Appearances
11:00 am Woman's Club
1:45 pm Community Center: Panel: "Publishing Political Books in the era of George W. Bush"

Website: www.gonetomorrow.org

Named an Editor’s choice by the New York Times Book Review and a nonfiction choice by The Guardian, Gone Tomorrow: the Hidden Life of Garbage is the widely praised debut by journalist and filmmaker Heather Rogers. Said to “read like a thriller”, gone tomorrow takes us on an oddly fascinating tour through the underworld of garbage and brings meaning to all that gets discarded.

“I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach”, Upton Sinclair said about The Jungle. In her book, Rogers aims for the head, setting out to explain – with the help of Marx, Engels, and Barthes – how the United States became “the world’s No. 1 producer of garbage.” She poses a question – “How did we get into this mess?’ –then lays out a thesis: garbage is good for business but bad for the environment, and Americans should produce less.

Along the way, she covers fascinating, stinky terrain, mentioning a 1930’s Rikers Island landfill where “rats became so numerous and so large” that the Sanitation Department ‘imported dogs in an effort to eliminate” them, describing how, by 1939, “52 percent of cities surveyed nationwide were “feeding garbage to swine”. She also traces the widespread use of the word “litterbug” to a 1950’s Keep America Beautiful campaign partly financed by the American Can Company that shifted the responsibility for environmental degradation to the individual. (Packages don’t litter, people do”).”

Rogers, a filmmaker who has written for Z Magazine, laments that so many people - sanitary engineers and others – have failed to challenge “the fundamentals of a market system that pathologically wasted resources. “No one can say that about Rogers. She uses terms like “surplus value” and “concentration of the means of production” and seems to believe if people “saw what happened to their waste, lived with the stench, witnessed the scale of destruction, they might start asking difficult question. “Maybe. Or they might ask, simply, “How do I get out of this dump?”

Heather Rogers was born in El Paso, Texas, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993 and did graduate work at the Glasgow School of Art in 1995. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries in Santa Fe, San Francisco, Glasgow, Scotland and Potsdam Germany. In 2002 her first documentary film, "Gone Tomorrow: the Hidden Life of Garbage", was an official selection at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Cinematexas, as well as touring Europe as part of the Okomedia Film Festival and numerous other festivals in the US and Europe. "Gone Tomorrow" also aired on public television and screened in movie theaters in San Francisco and New York City. Her articles have appeared in The Utne Reader, Z Magazine, Third Text, Bad Subjects, Punk Planet, Art and Design and The Brooklyn Rail. She currently resides in Brooklyn.

Appearance
Thursday, Nov. 15 4:20 pm Vero Beach Museum of Art: Panel: “Souls on Fire in the South”

Sean Sexton was born in Indian River County and grew up on Treasure Hammock Ranch, 8 miles west of Vero Beach, Florida. He divides his time between taking care of his family’s 600 acre Treasure Hammock Ranch and painting and writing. He is married to artist Sharon Sexton and they live on a homestead on the ranch with their two children in a house they built with their hands.

Sean Sexton makes as a subject of his art, the landscape, cattle, and features of this home ground as well as objects, tools, fruits, vegetables and cones and further evidence of his pastoral life. He works outside as well as inside, studio subjects from life, often taking several years to complete a painting during the correct hours of the day and time of the year. He is also a printmaker, steeped in intaglio etching tradition in a growing body of work in this medium.

Sexton has kept journals since 1974 which began as a school project while he was at college and has continued as a repository of writing, drawing, as well as catch-all of details comprising everything from calving records to a whole reflection of the conditions, incidentals, and realizations of his life. The journals presently exceed 100 volumes.

He is the author of Waldo’s Mountain. His first poetry volume, Blood Writing, is due out in early 2008.

Appearance
4:14 pm Courthouse Executive Center

Website: www.enidshomer.com

These stories feature women journeying into new geographical landscapes and exploring personal terrain. Enid Shomer offers a provocative, deeply resonant, and humorous look into the lives of women aged seventeen to seventy, who are, in one way or another, tourists in their own lives. A middle-aged Florida native travels to Tibet where she learns to accept the unexpected mantle of her birthright as a reincarnated Buddhist saint; a twenty-year-old Radcliffe student in 1966 returns home to the family business where she discovers a strange attraction to her cousin and long-buried family secrets; and an Alabama mother haunted by the recently unearthed sins of her past hunts for a fresh start in Florida. Whether facing divorce, old age, or the revelation of a long-held secret, Shomer’s characters act with gritty determination and flair.

Lauded for her keen observation of human nature, Shomer’s prose is finely crafted and often wonderfully funny. Author Bobbie Mason said it best when she described Shomer’s writing as, “engaging and heartfelt and true. Her characters are complicated and sensitive, and yet they are sappy, sassy, and sure as they bravely venture through the messed-up modern world we all recognize as home.”

Enid Shomer’s work has appeared in the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly. Imaginary Men, her debut collection, won the Iowa Short Fiction Award as well as the LSU/Southern Review prize. Four of these stories have garnered national prizes; two were chosen for New Stories from the South: the Year’s Best; one received the Balch Prize from Virginia Quarterly Review, and a fourth won the Glenna Luschei Prize from Prairie Schooner. Shomer lives in Tampa, Florida and is currently at work on a novel.

Appearances
Thursday, Nov. 15 10:30 am McKee Botanical Garden: "Landscaping and Gardening: A Symposium"

Expertly written by Tom MacCubbin and Georgia Tasker, Florida's Gardener's Guide: Revised Edition will become a valuable addition to your library. It is packed with the authors’ personal recommendations of plants that thrive in Florida and is presented in a concise, easy-to-use format.

The Florida’s Gardener’s Guide: Revised Edition features:

• 184 plant selections, from annuals to vines
• A large, full-color photograph of each plant
• Specific advice on planting, growing and care (including pest control)
• Garden planning and design ideas
• Quick reference symbols to indicate the plant’s sun requirements and added benefits, such as attracting birds and butterflies

The Florida’s Gardener’s Guide: Revised Edition offers sound and practical advice. Whether you are a novice or an experienced gardener, it will help you increase your enjoyment and satisfaction from your garden.

Georgia Tasker has been garden writer for The Miami Herald since 1979. She is author of Enchanted Ground, Gardening with Nature in the Subtropics (Fairchild Tropical Garden) and co-author with Tom MacCubbin of Florida Gardeners Guide (Cool Springs Press). Among her awards are the Barbour Medal from Fairchild Tropical Garden, the botanical garden's highest environmental award, and the first lifetime achievement award from Tropical Audubon Society.

Appearance
3:30 pm Community Center: Group Conversation: “Writers’ Talk”

Louhon Tucker was born in Indiana, graduated from Indiana State University with a degree in financial management and has enjoyed a wide-ranging and distinguished career in corporate finance on a global level. He currently is the senior financial executive with a multi-national group of companies based in Chicago.

Tucker has recently completed his first, yet to be published, novel. This novel is an action-infused travel adventure with international financial intrigue set in exotic locales. The characters and scenes come alive from his descriptive story-telling. His small town Indiana values, life experiences, keen observations of people and places on an international scale and his extensive knowledge and experience gained from an understanding of highly creative financial mischief coupled with an ability to develop and tell an intriguing and entertaining story have all come together with the result being a captivating and very enjoyable novel.

The thoughtful and many times thought-provoking plot development leaves the reading thinking not so much ‘who did it’, but rather ‘how did they do it’. As the novel ends, the reader is left in eager anticipation of the next adventure with varied and hopeful speculation as to how the relationship of certain key characters will evolve.

Mr. Tucker and his wife, Carolyn, live in Naperville, Illinois.

Appearance
1:45 pm Community Center: Panel: "Publishing Political Books in the era of George W. Bush"

Website: www.fr.com

Steve Wasserman, former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review from 1996-2005, is currently managing director of the New York office of Kneerim & Williams at Fish & Richardson, a literary agency. He is former editorial director of Times Books when it was a division of Random House, Inc., and a past publisher and editorial director of Hill & Wang and The Noonday Press, both division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. He served as chair of the nominating jury for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction and was a member of the nominating jury for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. His clients include Christopher Hitchens, Robert Scheer, David Thomson, Gary Indiana, among others.