Widely acknowledged as one of America's leading authorities on terrorism, Mike Ackerman's forte is recovering kidnap victims. He has lectured at the National War College, the Harvard Business School and Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, and appeared before the crisis-management teams of numerous multinational corporations. Ackerman served in the CIA's Clandestine Services for 11 years before resigning in 1975 to protest the sensation-seeking congressional investigation of the Agency and plead for the preservation of an American intelligence capability. Ackerman has appeared in the media infrequently (a prerequisite of his occupation) but copies of articles that have featured him have appeared in Forbes (very old), Vanity Fair (medium old), and The Economist (last year) and are available on request.
Award winning author, photographer and historian Dennis Adler has two very diversified writing careers. Recognized as one of the leading automotive photojournalists in the world, Adler also writes for Guns & Ammo Magazine, Petersen’s Handguns, and Guns of the Old West, among others, and has published ten books on firearms’ collecting. During his 30-year career he has written a further 20 books on collectible automobiles and had more than 5,000 articles and photographs published.
Steve Anderson was a Fulbright Fellow in Munich, Germany. His thorough research on the early US occupation in 1945 inspired him to write The Liberator, his first novel. Anderson is the author of three bestselling Kindle Singles novellas. He lives with his wife, René, in Portland, Oregon.
Chris Angus is the author of several works of nonfiction and is also a newspaper columnist. He has published more than four hundred essays, articles, book introductions, columns, and reviews in a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Albany Times-Union, Adirondack Life, American Forests, Wordsworth American Classics, Adirondack Explorer, and many more. Angus lives in Canton, New York.
René Appel, the grand master of the Dutch novel of psychological suspense started writing crime novels when he was a professor at the University of Amsterdam. His first novel, Handicap, a psychological thriller, was published in 1987. Since then, a new Appel book has come out almost every year — to date, 22 novels and three collections of short stories. A 10-time nominee for the Golden Noose, winner 2 times. His work has been adapted into movies and television. Ellery Queen Magazine has published two of his short stories. And his work has featured in anthologies of the best in thriller and crime stories.
For many years Pieter Aspe has been Flanders’ best-selling author and in the top 5 of all of Belgium’s authors. In 1995, his first thriller was published: The Square of the Revenge (Het vierkant van de wraak). Ever since then, Aspe has continued writing success stories. Between 1995 and 2010, 25 thrillers in the series have been very successfully published. These thrillers star a friendly police commissioner Pieter Van In, his loyal assistant and inseparable friend Guido Versavel, and his wife, Hannelore Martens, an elegant district attorney.
Helmut Barz was born in 1969 and grew up on the North Sea coast of Germany. He has worked with various Berlin theater groups and studied drama in Giessen and stage direction in Frankfurt. Barz has been an independent stage director and author since 1998, directing plays in Frankfurt and Cape Town, South Africa, among other locations. He's also worked in advertising, and is currently a freelance creative director, copywriter and consultant for companies such as IBM, ABN AMRO, and Manpower. Barz lives in Offenbach near Frankfurt.
John Vincent Bellezza, Senior Research Fellow, Tibet Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia
Ms. Cardinalli graduated from high school at 14 and university at 18. She then went on to serve with the FBI, earn a doctorship at Notre Dame at 25, and joined the military for service in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to her work for the military, Ms. Cardinalli is an acclaimed Flamenco guitarist and Opera Singer. She has released nine CDs of her wonderful guitar recitals.
Juraj Červenák was born in 1974 and lives and works in the historic town of Banská Štiavnica. His debut novel appeared in 1993. Since then, he has published more than 20 novels, most of them in the Czech language. He is best known for his work in the genre of historical fantasy with themes from Slavic history and mythology. His breakthrough Černokňažník (Warlock) cycle of novels and short stories is set at the beginning of the 9th century, a time of conflict between the Slavs and the Avars, and formation of the first Slavic principalities. His Bivoj duology was a re-imagining of old Czech legends in the context of the actual historical events of the late 7th century Bohemia. The Bogatyr trilogy was in turn based on Russian bylinas and real historical knowledge of the Kievan Rus era. Červenák was awarded numerous SF/F literary prizes, including The Fantázia Award and the Fantasy and Horror Award for the best Czech or Slovak novel of the year. His novels and short stories have been translated to English, Polish and Russian.
In December 1990, bush pilot Tom Claytor set off from Philadelphia, USA on a journey. He is flying around the world via all seven continents to visit the wilderness.
Lucien Clergue, Membre de la Legion d’Honneur, and President of the French Academy, made his name in the 1950s when, as a young photographer, he became close to both Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso both of whom supported him early in his career. He went on the establish himself as one of the most idiosyncratic and influential French photographers, combining a subtle artistic sensibility with the heat and sensuality of his native Provence. Clergue's archive contains a vast array of imagery, but there are three strong themes that emerge female nudes, bullfighting, and Picasso and his circle. While the nudes have become iconic in the history of photography, all three subject matters are of significant, recurrent interest to Clergue, allowing him to express himself and his world.
Writer, producer and journalist Toni Coppers started as a teacher, radio presenter and producer with the Belgian national radio & television before he truly committed himself to writing. He produced screenplays, travel books and two comic novels before he started to write crime. His series starring the stubborn, vivacious and seriously good-looking chief inspector Liese Meerhout was an instant success both with the critics and the public.
Robert Bruce Cormack spent thirty-six years in advertising before beginning You Can Lead a Horse to Water. His short stories have appeared regularly in Rosebud Magazine along with numerous other publications, including one anthology. He lives in Toronto, Canada.
Jeff Crook grew up in a haunted house in Memphis, TN, surrounded by ghosts both real and imagined. He and his friends were always fascinated by tales of terror and the macabre, and his mother would tell him stories of the family ghosts and of the nights she spent as a young girl hiding in a graveyard from her mother's stalker. His dorm room in college was haunted by a coed, who followed him for years afterward and was seen by many people. After marriage, he bought a brand new house hoping to start over with a clean slate, but a couple of ghosts moved in soon after. Jeff is the author of four previous novels (Dark Thane, Conundrum, The Thieves' Guild, The Rose and the Skull) and over forty stories. His short fiction has appeared in Murky Depths, Helix, Mallorn, Nature, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and many others.
Over the space of a few years, Bavo Dhooge has become a true master at the offbeat kind of thriller, full of effects, that just begs to be filmed by Quentin Tarantino. Bavo Dhooge’s Stiletto Libretto won him the Diamond Bullet. The book was also nominated for the Hercule Poirot Prize. The Vrij Nederland Thriller Guides unfailingly rates all Bavo’s novels with highest rankings that often leaves this professional by himself at the top of the thriller arena.
Cheryl Dietrich spent twenty years in the U.S. Air Force. After rising to the rank of squadron commander at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, she became the executive officer for the 86th Fighter Wing, commanded the Mission Support Squadron at Spangdahlem Air Base, and, at the Pentagon, developed plans sent to Congress for the Air Force’s personnel drawdown. She passed away in early 2015.
Activist, Actress, Celebrity, Singer – Legend.
Lena Einhorn is an author and a successful filmmaker and director. For her book Ninas resa (Nina’s Journey) Einhorn received the prestigious August Prize (2005) and the film with the same name was awarded two Guldbagge for best film and best manuscript. The film Stateless, Arrogant and Lunatic won the 1999 Prix Europa and was nominated for an Emmy. From the Shadows of the Past was awarded the medal of Le Prix Aventure et Découverte.
Originally from Buffalo, New York, John Enright holds a bachelor’s degree in literature from the City College of New York and a master’s degree in folklore from the University of California, Berkeley. After working in magazine journalism and book publishing, Enright left the United States to teach at the American Samoa Community College. He remained in the South Pacific for twenty-six years, directing environmental, cultural, and historical preservation programs and writing extensively about the islands. His collection of poems about Samoa, 14 Degrees South, won the University of the South Pacific Press’s inaugural International Literature Competition in 2011. The author of the Det. Apelu Soifua Jungle Beat Mystery series (Thomas & Mercer), Enright now lives in Jamestown, Rhode Island, with his wife, ceramicist Connie Payne.
Gillies Turle and Fiametta Monicelli have been living in Kenya for many years and moved to Shela in 1998 where they set about carefully restoring the ruins of Fatuma's Tower. When they arrived in Shela, the Tower had been abandoned for almost 100 years. Gillies’ lifelong work with antiques led to a detailed restoration of the building, successfully retaining the original feel of this historic house. Gillies and Fiametta live on the first floor of the Sand castle.
Mary Glickman won a Massachusetts Arts and Humanities Finalist Award for her novel Drones, written while a Masters in Creative Writing candidate at Boston University. Since then she has worked as a technical writer, as the Public Relations Director of the Massachusetts Podiatric Medical Society, as the ghostwriter of a book on geriatric psychiatry, and as the author of numerous grant applications, museum brochures and exhibits, and multi-media fund raising and educational instruments. In between she squeezed in several years living in France and Spain. She also managed to horrify her otherwise unflappable Catholic mother by converting to Judaism. Fortunately (from her mother’s point of view), Mary was the only one of the seven children to do so. The highlight of Mary’s life, however, remains the period in which she sweated bullets as a stable hand at an equestrian centre. Today Mary lives on Johns Island, South Carolina with her husband.
Alan Gold continues as an influential columnist for the Spectator, the Australian, and other highly regarded magazines and related media. He appears regularly in the media as a commentator on human rights and international politics. Several of his twenty-plus books have been optioned for movies. Alan lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife and three children.
Alexander Harcourt is a Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Ecology at the University of California, Davis. He has so far published over one hundred scientific articles, and two books, ‘Gorilla Society, co-authored with his wife, Kelly Stewart, and ‘Human Biogeography’. He has also published in several popular science venues. Professor Alexander Harcourt was born in Kenya, educated in England, and has taught in England and Tanzania. He has lived since 1990 in California.
Paul Heald teaches law at the University of Illinois. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he lectures worldwide and has taught at many universities including Oxford, Vanderbilt, and London. Before joining the law faculty, he clerked for the Honorable Frank M. Johnson Jr. in Montgomery, Alabama, whose landmark civil rights rulings included the Montgomery bus boycott. Heald sings baritone and lives in Champaign, Illinois, with his wife, Jill Crandall, a choir director.
Jim Houghton is a Hollywood aborigine. His father, Buck Houghton, produced many of television’s earliest filmed series, including the first seasons of “The Twilight Zone.” Houghton, Jr. started his professional acting career at age six, then transitioned in his thirties to writing -- first for night-time shows like “Tales From the Darkside” and “Knots Landing,” then in the dysfunctional-dream factory of daytime’s number one soap-opera, “The Young and the Restless," garnering Emmy and Writers Guild awards along the way.
Growing up in small-town Connecticut, Laura Hurwitz was an unlikely combination of tomboy and nerd, and consequently, spent a good deal of time roaming outdoors with a book in her hand. She is unreasonably proud of the fact she has read Jane Eyre twenty-seven times. Laura didn’t have to travel far for college, attending nearby Yale and obtaining a B.A. in English. Before graduating, she was serendipitously “discovered” by a campus-roving editor and was plucked and coiffed for the 1976 College Issue of Mademoiselle magazine. She signed a contract with Ford Models in New York, and worked as a model/actress for several years. A move to Palo Alto, California and back again, a long stint in the Yale Undergraduate Admissions Office, plus a passel- specifically six- children, including a set of triplets, followed. Twelve books were written in an award winning (Mom’s Choice, Teachers’ Choice) series, which sold to Scholastic Press in 2008. When she’s not writing obsessively, she’s reading obsessively, practicing yoga, and maintaining an active and hugely popular blog, Lolliblog at Tumblr. She also bakes a mean chocolate-chip cookie.
Mike Jenne is a licensed pilot, life-long aerospace aficionado and amateur space historian who grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. As a child, he felt the ground shudder-often - as the Saturn V moon rockets were tested at nearby Marshall Space Flight Center, and went to school with the children of Von Braun’s German rocket scientists. Trained as an Army Ranger and Military Freefall (“HALO”) Parachutist, he is a former Special Forces officer who has served across the globe, including deployments to Africa, Central America, Haiti, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. As a Special Forces survival instructor in the early Eighties, he worked directly with LTC James N. “Nick” Rowe (RIP) and other former Vietnam POWs to develop the Army’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) School at Camp Mackall, North Carolina. Mike and his wife, Adele, make their home in Trussville, Alabama.
Jennifer Edwards is an accomplished actress and daughter of film director Blake Edwards (Breakfast at Tiffany’s). Her passions include writing songs, screenplays, and novels. She is a mother of two in a large show business family. Edwards lives in Topanga Canyon, California.
Allen Johnson holds an MA from the University of Washington in communication and a PhD from Washington State University in psychology. He is an international keynote speaker and consultant. His platform style tends to be humorous and dramatic. He served for several years as a contract presenter for Franklin Covey. Johnson is also a jazz instrumentalist, singer, entertainer, and actor.
J.R. Jones is film editor and principal critic for the Chicago Reader, among the most respected alternative newsweeklies in the country. Since he began publishing there in 1996, his work has ranged from reviews to columns to short fiction to 20,000-word nonfiction narratives. His film reviews have twice been honored in the annual awards of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, and in early 2008 he succeeded Dave Kehr and Jonathan Rosenbaum as film critic for the Reader. Jones’ writing has also appeared in New York Press, Washington City Paper, East Bay Express, Amsterdam Weekly, San Diego Reader, Noir City, and the anthology Da Capo Best Music Writing 2000, edited by Peter Guralnick.
Victoria Andre King, while studying liberal/dramatic arts in southern California, became a successful actress and model, and then moved to Greece to discover her roots. She made her living writing for TV until 1995, when she took up a teaching position at the Lykourgos Stavrakos School of Film and Television Arts. In 1997, she started working in TV and film production, initially for local producers, eventually moving on up to larger productions for BBC, The History Channel, National Geographic, The Discovery Channel, and PBS. In 2009, she turned to teaching English in rural towns while also writing, translating, and editing. She resides between Heraklion, Greece and Los Angeles, CA.
A journalist for more than three decades, Koehler opted for early retirement in 1985 from the Associated Press as an assistant general manager and managing director of world services. As a foreign correspondent stationed in Berlin, Koehler covered Cold War incidents in Germany and nine trips with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, including his meeting with President John F. Kennedy in Vienna. As managing director of AP world services, he visited more than 100 countries. Koehler served in the U.S. Army for 13 years of active and reserve duty with a security clearance of Top Secret plus. In 1985, Koehler conducted an onsite study (Pakistan and Afghanistan) for the National Security Council and Congress on issues involving the Mujahidin war against the Soviet army. This was followed by a study in Europe for President Ronald Reagan and the Department of State on political and public perceptions in connection with a proposed medium-range missile treaty with the Soviet Union. Koehler is the author of “Stasi: The Untold Story of the East Germany Secret Police” (1999) and has written hundreds of articles on international political and economic affairs.
Gunnar Kunz was born in Wolfenbüttel in 1961. Kunz spent 14 years putting on stage plays in Braunschweig, Schwedt, Hamburg and Berlin, mainly as an assistant director and later as director and an author of over 30 plays. Increasingly he spent time in Scotland, which became a second home. Since 1997 he’s worked as a writer and, under a pen name, an illustrator for children’s books, cartoons, CDs and the satire magazine Eulenspiegel. He’s also written song lyrics in German and English and published nonfiction on diverse topics.
Born in 1948, Ron Lealos is a Vancouver, Washington author who has written two novels. A third novel is in progress. Mr. Lealos graduated from Western Washington University and studied fiction writing under Tom Spanbauer for several years in the “Dangerous Writing” group in Portland, Oregon. In his non-writing life, Mr. Lealos developed, manufactures, and markets a rapid, home test for the detection of HIV antibodies
Richard Leise received a B.A. in English from Canisius College, focused on contemporary literature and creative writing, working with Lowery Writer in Residence Mick Cochrane. As part of the college’s Contemporary Writers Series, he studied under great writers such as Ha Jin, Charles Baxter, Stewart O’Nan and Joyce Carol Oates. While a graduate student at SUNY Cortland (M.A.T. with Honors) he won the institution’s College Writing Contest. Presently, he teaches ninth and tenth grade ELA at Moravia High School in Central New York and has twice been named Teacher of the Year.
Mark Seth Lender is a self-taught writer and nature photographer. He is known in New England for his column, Salt Marsh Diary, syndicated to 100,000 Connecticut households through the Journal Register Group for over 9 years. Currently he writes - and reads - his own segment on the Public Radio International program Living on Earth with a reach of 80% of the National Public Radio market in the United States. Birds & Bards ©, coupling his photographs and wildlife journals with the work of major American poets, was just brought out as a front-page feature of the Poetry Society of America on their website. Another collection of his writing entitled Salt Marsh Diary, AYear on the Connecticut Shore was published by St. Martin’s Press.
Allan Levine is an award-winning writer, historian, and educator. He is the author of nine books, including the Sam Klein mystery trilogy (which was published in Canada and Germany). He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Gregory Liefer was raised in the small community of Wrangell in Southeast Alaska. He grew up with a strong appreciation of the outdoors and a fascination with aviation, often spending his leisure time hunting, fishing or dreaming about flying. During the summer months he worked as a deck hand on commercial fishing boats and later operated his own small boat for halibut and salmon. After graduating from Wrangell High School in 1976, the author attended the University of Wyoming and University of Alaska before joining the U.S. Army in 1978. During his military career he served as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division and as a helicopter pilot and instructor pilot at various overseas and stateside locations, including two tours in Alaska. After retirement from the military he remained in Alaska for another thirteen years, working as a civilian helicopter pilot and writing about aviation.
Derek Lin is the Director of Tao Studies at the Great Tao Foundation of America, located in El Monte, California. He has served in that position for over ten years, giving weekly seminars on the Tao and speaking at universities and martial arts schools by invitation. Lin's work has won recognition as a bridge spanning the cultural chasm between East and West. Lin also manages a leading Internet resource on the practical application of the Tao in everyday life. The web site has enjoyed popular acclaim since its inception in 1998. It is currently ranked #3 worldwide by Google in the subject of Taoism, and #2 by MSN. Derek Lin lives with his wife in Los Angeles.
Laura Love is an acclaimed African American singer/songwriter who has released 12 CDs since 1990 and has toured internationally over the past 25 years. She grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska in a chaotic household with her sister and an unstable mother. Eventually, she fled to Seattle where she built an independent music career which caught the attention of industry giant, Universal Records. Laura released two praised CDs with Universal before going back to her roots as an independent artist. Her first memoir, You Ain’t Got No Easter Clothes—which that describes her traumatic childhood—was published as by Hyperion Books in 2004. She currently lives in Seattle, Washington.
Sam Moses began writing as a seaman apprentice on a Navy cruiser in the South China Sea, and was a Sports Illustrated writer for 18 years. Sam has been deputy editor of AutoWeek magazine, where he won the Ken Purdy Award, automotive journalism's highest honor; and creative director for a website covering climbing on Mt. Everest. He's also edited books, including "The Birth of Hot Rodding: The Story of the Dry Lakes Era," which won an award for the best motorsports book in 2006; and has written a movie, "On Any Sunday II." Today he drives nearly 100 new cars a year, writing online car reviews that are subscribed to by 4000 websites with 36 million viewers per month. Sam lives in the Northwest. For fun, he races his historic NASCAR Oldsmobile, fools with his four classic hotrod motorcycles, and kiteboards in the Sea of Cortez in winter.
Debra Pawlak has been intrigued by movies and history ever since she can remember. She has been writing for technical journals, magazines and web sites for 30 years. Her technical background required painstaking research with an eye for detail—every last fact - which has helped maintain an eye for verity in the current work. Today, her 18-year writing career on Hollywood and history spans popular websites, the biographical Bringing Up Oscar (Pegasus 2011), and magazines including The Mediadrome. Debra writes from southeastern Michigan where she lives with her husband, Michael.
Steven Potter PhD received degrees at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Ph.D), and Harvard Medical School (postdoctoral research training). He has been a professor for the past thirty years, mostly at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, and has published over 100 research papers, including six in the prestigious journal Nature, where Watson and Crick published their discovery of the double helix. He has written review articles and book chapters, coauthored the third edition of Larsen’s Human Embryology textbook for medical students and was published by the legendary editor, Bob Loomis, at Random House (Designer Genes). Currently, he is the Director of the Gene and Protein Expression Core and collaborates with DHC investigators to study intestinal development. Dr. Potter is also the PI of a research program focused on kidney development. His overall research strategy investigates the genetic pathways that drive organogenesis, with particular interest in genes that occupy upper level positions in the genetic hierarchy of development.
Ted Riccardi, is a professor emeritus in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. He has served as the Counselor of Cultural Affairs at the United States Embassy in New Delhi. Ted and his wife split their time between New York City and Nepal.
Maria Riva was born in Berlin in 1924, and as a teenager became a US citizen. A graduate of and then teacher at the Max Reinhardt Academy, she went on to perform in Germany and Italy as part of a troupe during and immediately after World War II. She returned to the US in late 1946 and taught acting at Fordham University, where she met her future husband, set-designer William Riva. In the early 1950s, after the birth of her first two sons, John Michael and John Peter, she resumed her acting career in starring roles both on Broadway and on television.
Since reading his first Hemingway novel in 1986, Robert Wheeler has been a Hemingway enthusiast. Robert was moved by the humanistic writing of the man—a writer capable of transcending his readers to foreign settings and into the hearts and minds of his protagonists. Hemingway and his work have inspired Robert to travel throughout France, Italy, Spain, Africa, and Cuba, where he has sought to gain insight into the motivation behind Hemingway’s books and short stories. As a teacher, lecturer, and photojournalist, Robert portrays the intimate connection Hemingway had with the woman he never stopped loving, Hadley, and with the city he loved most, Paris.
Robert Wintner has written twelve novels. His book, In a Sweet Magnolia Time, was nominated for both a Pulitzer Prize and a PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also point man on the current campaign to relieve Hawaii reefs of unregulated pressure from the aquarium trade. He founded Snorkel Bob’s Hawaii, Hawaii’s biggest reef outfitter and only snorkel equipment manufacturer. He lives with his wife in Hawaii.
Roger A. Roffman is a Professor Emeritus of Social Work at the University of Washington and the founding director (1985) of the School’s Innovative Programs Research Group. With federal funding for more than twenty-five years, he and his colleagues have conducted a series of studies evaluating counseling interventions for marijuana dependent adults and adolescents. Roger grew up in Massachusetts, completed undergraduate studies at Boston University and then graduate work at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley. He joined the University of Washington faculty in 1972. With his wife, Cheryl Richey, Roger lives in Seattle.
Sharman Apt Russell is an author of unique voice (8 best sellers) and solid Publishers Weekly review status. She is a born storyteller, crafting a tale unshorn of her own experiences and yet imbued with cosmic truths that readers find enthralling and life changing. Her work is almost never out of print, has been translated into over 8 languages and cited in thousands of other works. Now that she is moving into both fiction (middle, YA and science fiction) as well as continuing her award-winning career as an essayist into the sciences and humanities. Her renaissance-woman work has grown to a maturity and capability exhibited by few contemporary authors.
Author of The Black Hills Trilogy. “Born to poor dirt farmers in South Dakota, I spent the first years of my life on a farm where I went barefoot, rode a horse to a one-room school house, was taught to shoot by age eight, slopped the hogs, milked cows, and collected cow chips for the stove. Being close to The Black Hills mountains, I was raised on legends of Crazy Horse, Wild Bill Hickok, and Calamity Jane; and at sixteen, looked down into Dead Man's Gulch over which Jesse James jumped his horse to escape a posse. My father, born in 1898 while Geronimo was in exile, loved to tell stories, and I loved to listen. For years I sat at the feet of the master, learning the art of story-telling and soaking up the parlance and experience of living the end of an era. I love it when reviews tell of readers laughing and crying and becoming excited while reading my stories.”
Unni Turrettini was born in northern Norway and grew up in Drammen, a city near Oslo, approximately twenty minutes from where mass-murderer Breivik was raised. As a foreign exchange student, she graduated from high school in Kansas City, Kansas, an experience that changed her life. She has law degrees from Norway, France, and the United States. A member of the New York Bar, she has worked as a lawyer in Paris and Geneva. Her multicultural upbringing has provided her with a flexible worldview, and she considers herself a voice of reason. Ultimately, she is a passionate advocate of human rights and reason, especially freedom of speech and socio-political issues. She currently lives with her family in Geneva, Switzerland, and is at work on a second book, a behind-the-scenes examination of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Frances Vieta was born and raised in New York City. She lived in Rome, Italy, for twenty-seven years, working as an investigative reporter and writer for American and Italian media. She has written on a variety of socioeconomic issues. She resides in New York City.
Elyce Wakerman is the author of Father Loss: Daughters Discuss the Man That Got Away, which captured the immediate and long-range effects of a father’s absence. She resides in Sherman Oaks, California.
Herbert Warden III is the author of two historical anthologies.. A graduate of Princeton University, Warden served in the Marine Corps in World War II and the Korean War. Sadly, Herb passed away in 2012.
Christopher L. Webber is an Episcopal priest with degrees in theology and an honorary doctorate. He has always used his scholarship to make teachings of the past accessible to ordinary Christians today. Among his thirty-plus books is his most recent biography of James W. C. Pennington, one of the leading African American voices in the pre–Civil War abolitionist movement. Webber lives in San Francisco, California.
Bob Weintraub’s stories have appeared in several publications including 96 Inc. and NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture. He is a graduate of Brandeis University and Boston University School of Law and lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife, Sandra. Bob Weintraub grew up in the Dorchester area of Boston. He is a graduate of Brandeis University and Boston University School of Law. His stories have appeared in Spitball, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Fenway Fiction, the Sun: A Magazine of Ideas, Response, and 96 Inc. He resides in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife, Sandra.
R. L. Wilson is the most published author in the history of firearms. Since his career began in 1960 he has produced some 50 books, and more than 325 articles, auction catalogues, book introductions and monographs on firearms, historical figures, hunting and the art of the engraver. He is a consultant to museums and private collectors.
Niklas Zetterling is a researcher at the Swedish Defense College and the author of over 12 military history books.
Claude Salhani is an author, political analyst, and Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist. As a journalist, he has traveled to more than eighty-six countries to report on major events and covered conflicts including the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the Iraq-Iran War, and the invasion of Kuwait. As an analyst, he has written extensively about the September 11 terrorist attacks and the wars in the Middle East. He has appeared on more than forty networks, including CNN, Fox, and BBC. His work has been published in the world’s top newspapers, from the New York Times to the Middle East Times. He now lives in Laval, Quebec, Canada.
Joseph Kennedy, recently deceased, was a professional archaeologist and writer living in Hawaii who had spent a great deal of time in both England and America researching the life of Sir Richard Burton. Kennedy is also the author of the books, Coca Exotica, The Tropical Frontier, and The North Shore of O’ahu, and was a regular contributor to Natural History Magazine. In addition to many publications in professional journals, he had also written for Scientific American’s Discovering Archaeology, Mobius Magazine, Pacifica, Archaeology, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, and Hawaii Architectural Digest. He lived in Haleiwa, HI
Page Wilson, now in her nineties, is an active writer and social justice activist. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun and is the author of Through the Looking Glass Darkly, a Political Fantasy: A Day with President Garry Boldwater and the coauthor of How to Cook Reagan’s Goose. She lives in Washington, DC.
Minal Khan was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and received the Presidential Award for English Literature in Pakistan in 2005. She gained a degree in economics at Cornell University, where she also served as the international news editor for the Cornell Progressive. She gained a law degree at the University of California, Davis and was recently called to at the California Bar.
Guido Eekhaut, born 1954 in Leuven, wrote and published nearly forty books and over a hundred stories, radio drama, essays, interviews and countless newspaper and magazine articles. Bestselling author in the Netherlands.
M. John Fayhee worked as a newspaper reporter and editor for 15 years, including stints with the El Paso Times, the Aspen Times and the Summit Daily News. His magazine work has appeared in Outside, Sierra, Sports Illustrated, ForbesLife MountainTime, USA Today, Aspen Sojourner, Adventure Travel, the Denver Post, Islands, The Walking Magazine, Men’s Fitness, Summit, Canoe & Kayak, High Country News, and Backpacker. Fayhee helped resurrect the iconic Mountain Gazette, which published works by Hunter S. Thompson, Edward Abbey, Charles Bowden, Mary Sojourner, Craig Childs, John Nichols, Royal Robbins, William Eastlake and Galen Rowell. Fayhee lives in Silver City, New Mexico.