Check back here to see updates on the authors who will be participating in the 2012 Book Festival! You can also see the schedule and programs for the 2012 Book Festival on the 2012 Schedule page.
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Below are the confirmed authors:
Jane Armstrong has had her work appear in Newsweek, The North American Review, Connecticut Review, and New Orleans Review. She has worked as a commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. She holds degrees from Florida State University and University of Southern Mississippi, and has been with Northern Arizona University since 1995.
Monica Brown writes books that are inspired by her Peruvian-American heritage and her desire to share Latino stories with children. Her books include My Name Is Celia: The Life of Celia Cruz, a recipient of the Américas Award for Children’s Literature; Side by Side: The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, an NAACP Image Award nominee; and her latest, Waiting for the Biblioburro. An English professor at Northern Arizona University, she specializes in Latino Literature and Multicultural Literature. She is a recipient of the prestigious Rockefeller Fellowship on Chicano Cultural Literacies from the Center for Chicano Studies at the University of California.
Eddie Chuculate, a writer of Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee descent, won a PEN/O. Henry Award in 2007 for his story “Galveston Bay, 1826.” His first book, Cheyenne Madonna, was published in July 2010. His stories have appeared in Manoa, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Blue Mesa Review, Many Mountains Moving, and The Kenyon Review. A sports writer for nine years and a copy editor for ten, he later earned a degree in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. In 2010, he was admitted to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Darcy Falk is recognized as an adventurous, expressive and nationally important textile artist whose work has been shown at galleries across the U.S. Her commissioned work can be seen at Taylor House and HALO House. Her essays have also been published nationally and regularly appear in Flagstaff Live! She also teaches occasional workshops and opens her workspace to the public. She has served on the board of Flagstaff Cultural Partners and the Artists’ Coalition of Flagstaff. Darcy makes her home in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Peter Friederici is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes about science, nature, and the environment from his home in Arizona. His articles, essays, and books tell stories of people, places, and the links between them. His books include Nature’s Restoration: People and Places on the Front Lines of Conservation, The Suburban Wild, and Earth Notes: Exploring the Southwest’s Canyon Country from the Airwaves.
Laura Kelly joined the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra as its executive director in August 2008. Prior to joining the FSO, Laura worked in Eastern Europe for eight years as a journalism professor and media consultant in Albania, Slovakia and Bulgaria, where she was the head of the Journalism and Mass Communication department at the American University in Bulgaria. A former Fulbright Scholar, Laura has worked with young journalists and media outlets in Kosovo, Georgia, Armenia and Mongolia.
Katherine Larson was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in creative writing at University of Virginia. Her first collection, Radial Symmetry, was selected by Louise Glück as winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 2011. She also won a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and the Union League Civic and Arts Foundation Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in AGNI Online, Boulevard, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Poetry. In addition to writing, she has spent the last ten years as a research scientist and field ecologist. She collaborated with Heather Green on The Ghost Net Project at the University of Arizona.
Susan Lowell is a fourth-generation Arizonan descended from explorers, prospectors, and schoolmarms. At the age of seven she began to make little books with scrap paper, crayons, and Scotch tape, and she has never stopped. She and her husband, Ross Humphreys, own Rio Nuevo Publishers and Rio Chico Books for Children in Tucson. Her honors include the Arizona Young Reader Award and the Milkweed Editions National Fiction Prize. The Three Little Javelinas/Los Tres pequeños jabalíes won the ONEBOOKAZ for Kids in 2010. The Great Grand Canyon Time Train was published in 2011. Next, the three javelinas return for A Very Hairy Christmas!
Gregory McNamee has written 30 books and more than 3000 articles and other publications. His essays, short stories, and commentaries have appeared in many journals, including The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Outside, Backpacker, Sierra, Arizona Highways, Modern Maturity, and Science. He is a contributing editor to the Encyclopædia Britannica, a research fellow at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona, and a lecturer in the Eller School of Management, also at the University of Arizona.
Stella Pope Duarte is an international, award-winning author who began her career in 1995 after a prophetic dream led her to understand her call to write. Since then, she has won awards and accolades for her work nationwide, and most recently was awarded a 2009 American Book Award for her latest work, If I Die in Juárez. Her work has been characterized as fighting discrimination and empowering women through writing. She conducts writing workshops for students of all ages and works as adjunct faculty in creative writing for ASU, the Alhambra School District, and the Maricopa Community College District.
Adam Rex grew up in Phoenix, and now lives in Tucson with his astrophysicist wife, Marie. He studied illustration at the University of Arizona, and has been publishing kids’ books since 2003. His picture book, Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, was a New York Times Bestseller, and his first novel, The True Meaning of Smekday, has been optioned for a feature film by Dreamworks. His most recent novel, Cold Cereal is the first in a new middle-grade trilogy. He actually appears as a character (along with author Mac Barnett) in his latest picture book, Chloe and the Lion. It’s kind of meta.
Marianne Roccaforte is a faculty member at Paradise Valley Community College. An educator and counselor for more than 25 years, she specializes in working with young-adult artists across disciplines on issues of identity development, career decision-making, and interpersonal communication; she also designs and teaches personal-growth courses and workshops tailored to fine and performing artists. A lifelong musician, she writes about the psychology of the artist in her book, Bridges in the Mind.
Lisa Schnebly Heidinger has deep ties to Arizona, all the way back to her great-grandmother, Sedona Schnebly. A writer since childhood, she first worked in radio and television. Later she taught broadcast journalism at the University of Arizona, wrote for Tucson and Arizona Highways magazines, and was a columnist for the Arizona Republic. In 1989 she moved to Flagstaff to open the Northern Arizona Bureau for KTVK-TV. She is the author of Chief Yellowhorse Lives On and the children’s book The Three Sedonas. Now in Phoenix, she was named this year’s ONEBOOKAZ winner for her book Arizona: 100 Years Grand.
Thomas Sheridan knows firsthand the canyons, forests, and deserts of Arizona. He is the curator of ethnohistory at the Arizona State Museum. His work involves documentary history and ethnographic studies, with projects focusing on a farming community in northwestern Mexico, Arizona history, the Mexican community in Tucson, the northern and southern frontiers of the Spanish empire in the Americas, and the Seri Indians. In Arizona: A History, he explores the ways in which Native Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos have inhabited Arizona over 11,000 years.
Conrad Storad is an award-winning author of more than 30 science and nature books for children. His book Rattlesnake Rules won a Glyph Award in 2010 from the Arizona Book Publishers Association. He was the founding editor of Chain Reaction Magazine, a publication for young readers that highlighted science, learning, and creative activity at ASU. He has a bachelor’s from the University of Akron and a master’s degree from ASU. He is a member of the National Association of Science Writers, Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, and Arizona Book Publisher’s Association.
Nicole Walker has published work in Ploughshares, Bellingham Review, New American Writing, Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Ninth Letter, Crazyhorse, among other places and her book of poems is forthcoming from Barrow Street Press. In 2007, she received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She earned her degree from University of Utah. She is a professor of creative writing at the Northern Arizona University with an emphasis in nature writing, formal analysis, science writing.
Allen Woodman has published scores of short stories in magazines and anthologies, including Flash Fiction, Micro Fiction, Sudden Fiction Continued, Mirabella, and Story. He has also published six books of fiction, including Saved by Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald, a collection of humorous stories, and The Cows Are Going to Paris, a children’s picture book. He holds degrees from Huntingdon College and Florida State University, and has taught at Northern Arizona University since 1986.
More authors’ names will be released in the months to come.