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The 2008 Alabama Book Festival will showcase more than 70 authors, storytellers, publishers, illustrators and performers at Old Alabama Town in Montgomery on Saturday, April 19. And if you are a teacher grades 6-12, check out the Alabama Writers' Forum 3rd Annual pre-festival creative writing workshop on Friday, April 18.

	The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, located in Montgomery, is the sixth largest Shakespeare festival in the world and attracts more than 300,000 annual visitors. ASF is also the home of the Southern Writers’ Project, which regularly commissions new work that is rooted in the southern experience. Recent plays that have entered the American theatre canon from SWP include Gee's Bend, A Lesson Before Dying and Fair and Tender Ladies. One of this year's commissions is Bear Country by multi-published and award-winning playwright Michael Vigilant. The play takes a compelling look at the wit, wisdom, life and times of legendary Alabama football coach Paul Bear Bryant. Bear Country will be featured in a concert reading at the SWP Festival of New Plays in May.
	Dan Albergotti is the author of The Boatloads (BOA Editions, 2008), which was selected by Edward Hirsch as the winner of the 2007 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. He has been a scholar at the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers’ conferences and a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A former poetry editor of The Greensboro Review, he currently teaches creative writing and literature courses at Coastal Carolina University.
	Bruce Alford's first collection of poetry, Terminal Switching, was recently released by Negative Capability. He is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, where he teaches with Alabama Poet Laureate Sue Brannon Walker and novelist Carolyn Haines. Previously, he worked as a reporter for the Hammond Daily Star, Hattiesburg American and the Birmingham Post Herald. His most notable interview was with General Colin Powell.
	Amadeus the Traveling Dog is a four-year old male Great Pyrenees, best known for his gentle ways and endearing smile, who travels from city to city and writes delightful and informative books for children. Pet Me Safely is Amadeus’ latest book.
	Jean Anderson is the author of more than 20 cookbooks and is a regular contributor to Bon Appétit, Cottage Living, Family Circle, Food & Wine, and Gourmet. She is the recipient of five Tastemaker Awards and has been inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame. A Love Affair with Southern Cooking is her latest book.
	Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why was named one of the Best Books for Young Adults in 2008 (YALSA), a Quick Pick for Reluctant YA Readers, an Association of Booksellers for Children Best Book 2007, and one of Barnes & Noble’s Top 10 Best for Teens 2007.
	Ace Atkins is the author of critically acclaimed crime novels, including Crossroad Blues, Leavin’ Trunk Blues, Dark End of the Street, Dirty South, and White Shadow. “If Raymond Chandler came from the South,” Friedman said, “his name would be Ace Atkins.” His new novel is Wicked City .
	Philip D. Beidler is author or editor of more than 10 books, including The Good War's Greatest Hits: World War II and American Remembering and the just published American Wars, American Peace: Notes from a Son of the Empire. Recipient of the 1999 Eugene Current-Garcia Award for Alabama's Distinguished Scholar, he is professor of English at the University of Alabama.
	Stephen Berry is the author of All That Makes a Man: Love and Ambition in the Civil War South (Oxford, 2003) and House of Abraham: Lincoln & the Todds, A Family Divided by War (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). He teaches history at the University of Georgia.
	Emma Bolden is the author of How to Recognize a Lady, a chapbook of poems published as part of Edge by Edge. Her short story "Sympathy" was selected as the winner of the 2007 Georgetown Review prize, and her one-act, Drinks, was selected as the winner of the American Theatre Co-Op's Winter 2004 Contest for Original One-Act Plays. She has two more chapbooks on the way -- The Mariner's Wife, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in May, and The Sad Epistles, forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in September.
	Al Bouler is an actor and historical interpreter. Al taught Special Education for almost 19 years and now makes a living portraying historical figures such as David Crockett, School Master Alpheus Reid Adams of The Adams Chapel School at Old Alabama Town, and for the third year in a row Edgar Allan Poe at the Alabama Book Festival. Al has also been featured in several films and TV productions.
	Rick Bragg is the Pulitzer Prize-wining author of All Over But the Shoutin' and Eva’s Man. His new book, Prince of Frog Town, will be published this spring.
	Nickole Brown is a poet and fiction writer whose work has been featured in The Writer's Chronicle, Poets & Writers, Another Chicago Magazine, Diagram Magazine, 32 Poems, The Cortland Review, and Mammoth Books' Sudden Stories anthology. Her debut collection of poems, Sister, was published in 2007. She is also director of marketing and development for Sarabande Books.
	Janet Chambers has taught reading and writing to children of all ages, first in the United Kingdom and more recently in Alabama. She is the author of Ready, Set, Read: Building a Love of Letters and Literacy through Fun Phonics Activities.
	J. William Chambers is a native of Athens, AL. His poetry, reviews, and essays have been widely published in numerous journals, magazines, and other media. Negative Capability Press published his most recent volume of poetry, A Taste of Wine and Gentian, in 2000, and his Collage: A Tribute to Steven Owen Bailey, an anthology, in 2006. He is co-editor with Alabama Poet Laureate Sue Brannan Walker of Whatever Remembers Us: An Anthology of Alabama Poetry (2007). He was founding editor and publisher of Elk River Review (1990-1999).
	Kimberly Sumerel is artistic director for Children’s Educational Theater. CET is a professional southern theater organization dedicated to entertaining, educating, and enhancing the lives of young people. CET will present five creative enrichment programs for children to coincide with the summer APLS "Catch the Reading Bug" program.
	Georgine Clarke is the visual arts program manager and gallery director for the Alabama State Council on the Arts. She is editor of Alabama Masters, a special publication of the Arts Council commemorating the Year of Alabama Arts and featuring Alabama visual artists.
	Clifford the Big Red Dog is the fun-loving character of Norman Bridwell’s popular series of books and television show produced by Scholastic Studios. Clifford will be available throughout the day to greet children and sign autographs.
	The play Conecuh People, written by Ty Adams and adapted from Wade Hall's autobiographical book of the same name, tells the poignant story of a boy's adolescence and two events—one good and one bad—that shaped his life. In 2007 Conecuh People was selected as one of the 50 "Must See" events in the state by the Alabama Bureau of Tourism & Travel.
	Kirk Curnutt is the author of a collection of short stories, Baby, Let’s Make a Baby. He is a former finalist for both the Tennessee Book Award/Peter Taylor Prize and the Dana Literary Awards and a three-time consecutive winner of the Hackney Literary Award for short stories. His new book is Breathing Out the Ghost.
	Russell Davis is a professional comedy magician based in Huntsville, AL. He has been a full-time performer since 1987, entertaining people at conventions, libraries, schools, and many other venues. Russell has presented magic shows everywhere from Sydney, Australia, to O'Neill, Nebraska. When not performing his show, "The Magic of Reading," he enjoys books about magic and magicians from the past. He and wife Marylyn have two cats, neither of whom knows how to read. Yet.
	Artists-in-residence Peggy Denniston (writer) and Sheila Hagler (photographer) are the directors of Merging of Cultures, a writing/photography program in Mobile County public schools, now in its tenth year. MOC recently received an Innovator Award from the Southern Growth Policies Board. Their book In the Path of the Storms: Bayou La Batre, Coden, and the Alabama Gulf Coast, co-authored with Frye Gaillard, has just been released by the University of Alabama Press.
	Penn Dilworth has been buying and selling used and rare books, pamphlets, and documents since 1981. He has exhibited in over 100 book and antique shows ranging from Houston and Austin to Indianapolis, Raleigh, St. Petersburg, and many points in between. In addition to “walk in” appraisals for the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tennessee, he is a frequent speaker around the state and beyond on books and book collecting.
	William H. Drinkard’s first novel, Elom, has just been published by Tor Publishing. Praised by David Drake, author of Lord of the Isles-- “Engaging characters in a story told with the feel of a myth passed down by word of mouth”--Elom is a mesmerizing science fiction tale of identity and culture, alien transgressions, and the ultimate redemption of mankind. Drinkard is hard at work on his second novel, Fair Chance.
	Gerald Duff has taught literature and writing at Vanderbilt University, Kenyon College, and Johns Hopkins University. The title story of Fire Ants won the Cohen Prize from Ploughshares Magazine, was cited in Best American Short Stories, and republished in The Editors’ Choice: New American Stories. His novels have been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Prize, an Edgar Allan Poe Award, an International eBook Award, and a Texas Institute of Letters Award. He has published two collections of poetry, A Ceremony of Light and Calling Collect, and six novels, including Indian Giver, That’s All Right, Mama: The Unauthorized Life of Elvis’s Twin, and his most recent, from NewSouth Books, Coasters.
	Elizabeth O. Dulemba is an award-winning children's book illustrator. Her first picture book, The Prince's Diary, was named No.1 2006 Valentine's Day Pick by Book Sense, and she's been learning Spanish in anticipation of her most recent picture book, the bilingual Paco and the Giant Chile Plant. She also teaches "Beginning Drawing" and "Creating Picture Books" at the John C. Campbell Folk School and speaks regularly at schools and events.
	Jennifer Echols has written two romantic comedies for Simon Pulse, the teen line for Simon & Schuster: the National Readers' Choice Award-winning Major Crush and The Boys Next Door. Jennifer's teen drama, Boy in Blue, will be published by MTV Books in March 2009.
	Loretta Ellsworth's newest book, In Search of Mockingbird, was a Midwest Connection's Spring/Summer Pick, received the Midwest Bookseller's Choice Honor Award for 2007, and was nominated for Teen's Top Ten and Best Books for Young Adults (YALSA). It was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and an audio edition will be available in May. She is also the author of The Shrouding Woman, which was named to the Amelia Bloomer Project List of Recommended Feminist Books, was a CCBC Choice, and was a 2005 Rebecca Caudill nominee. Ellsworth is a former middle school teacher and a student in Hamline University's Master's Program in Writing for Children.
	Ellen Feldman is the author of the novels Lucy and The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank. She writes for the American Heritage Web site and is a sought-after speaker. Her latest novel, Scottsboro, has just been released. She lives in New York City with her husband.
	Joe Formichella is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in Grassland Review, Red Bluff Review, and the Southern literary anthologies Stories from the Blue Moon Café II and Climbing Mt. Cheaha. He is the author of The Wreck of the Twilight Limited, a novel, and Here’s to You, Jackie Robinson is an historical account of the all-black Prichard Mohawks. His new book is Murder Creek: The “Unfortunate Incident” of Annie Jean Barnes.
	Robert Fout's photography has been featured in Time-Life books, Southern Accents magazine, and various other publications over the years, including four books: Montgomery: At the Forefront of a Century, Alabama: A State of Mind, Montgomery & The River Region: Together We Build, and most recent, Montgomery & the River Region: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow.
	Stephen Fox’s works include John Muir and His Legacy, a history of the American environmental movement organized around the life of Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, and The Mirror Makers, a history of American advertising and its practitioners. His Transatlantic: Samuel Cunard, Isambard Brunel, and the Great Atlantic Steamships was published in 2003. His latest book is Wolf of the Deep: Raphael Semmes and the Notorious Confederate Raider CSS Alabama.
	Jeff Frederick teaches southern history at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He has written about topics as divergent as NASCAR, interest groups, reactions to the civil rights movement, and George Wallace. Stand Up for Alabama: Governor George Wallace is his first book.
	Frye Gaillard is the author of more than twenty books. His most recent titles are With Music and Justice for All and Prophet From Plains: Jimmy Carter and His Legacy. Gaillard is writer in residence at the University of South Alabama.
	Kate Gale is founding editor and director of Red Hen Press. She is a poet and writer with four books of poetry, a novel, a bilingual children's book, editor of three literary anthologies, and has recently completed the libretto for the opera Rio de Sangre by Don Davis.
	Richard Goodman is the author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France. Goodman has written for the New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, Commonweal, Vanity Fair, Garden Design, Grand Tour, The Writer's Chronicle, The Louisville Review, Saveur, Ascent, French Review, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. He is a winner of a Hopwood Award for his fiction. His new book is The Soul of Creative Writing, essays on writing and language.
	Matthew Graham is the Director of Creative Writing and Professor of English at the University of Southern Indiana. He has published three collections of poetry: A World Without End, New World Architecture, and 1946. Graham is the co-director and co-founder of the USI RopeWalk Writers Retreat and the RopeWalk Writers Winter Retreat, as well as the RopeWalk Visiting Writers Series. He also is poetry editor of the Southern Indiana Review.
	Wayne Greenhaw is the author of many books, including Ghosts on the Road: Poems of Alabama and Mexico and King of Country, a newly revised edition of his 1994 novel about country music. Greenhaw is the 2006 recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Alabama’s Distinguished Writer and the Clarence Cason Award for Nonfiction.
	Anton Haardt is an artist, photographer, and writer. She owns the Anton Haardt Gallery, which specializes in folk and outsider art and is based in Montgomery and New Orleans. Her new book, Mose T From A to Z, has just been published.
	Geoffrey Hill is an ornithologist and writer whose most recent work, Ivorybill Hunters: The Search for Proof in a Flooded Wilderness, details the search for the elusive ivorybill. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2007.
	Joshilyn Jackson is the author of The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, Between Georgia, and Gods in Alabama. Her short fiction has been published in literary magazines and anthologies. Her bestselling debut novel, Gods in Alabama, won SIBA's 2005 Novel of the Year Award and was a #1 BookSense pick. Her second book, Between, Georgia, was also a #1 BookSense pick, making Jackson the first author in BookSense history to receive #1 status in back to back years.Her third novel, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, will be published by GCP (formerly Warner Books) in March of 2008.
	Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s new book is Poor Man’s Provence. She is an award-winning reporter and columnist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution and has earned numerous awards for her writing, including the National Headliner Award for commentary in and Scripps Howard's Ernie Pyle Memorial Award. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary and is also author of Good Grief, the authorized biography of Charles Schulz. Currently she writes a syndicated column for Kings Features Syndicate.
	Wanda Johnson is a nationally recognized storyteller, teaching artist, and motivational speaker. She is an Alabama Council on Rural Schools Touring Artist, Alabama Community Scholar, and Alabama Road Scholar. Wanda is an ASCA Individual Alabama Artist Fellowship Recipient. Wanda has been featured at several festivals, including the National Storytelling Festival. Her debut CD, Rich in Love, won the Storytelling World Honor Award.
	Amos Kennedy, printer-in-residence, encourages everyone to “Proceed and Be Bold.” Check out a short from his new film.
	Cassandra King is the bestselling author of four novels, Making Waves, The Sunday Wife, The Same Sweet Girls, and Queen of Broken Hearts, as well as numerous short stories and articles. Among other accolades, The Sunday Wife was a BookSense Pick and a People magazine Page Turner of the Week; The Same Sweet Girls was the national number one BookSense selection of February ‘05; and Queen of Broken Hearts, March ‘07, chosen for the Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club. A native of L. A. (Lower Alabama), she resides in the Low Country of South Carolina.
	Willie James King is an Alabama poet who grew up in Orrville and now resides in Montgomery. His latest collection is The House in the Heart, just released from Tebot Bach Press.His previous books include At the Forest Edge and Wooden Windows. Mr. King has published poems widely, holds the M.F.A., and was a founding member of the Alabama Writers' Forum's board of directors. He has been nominated for four Pushcart prize awards.
	Nana Lampton lives on a farm in Oldham County, KY, and is the CEO of American Accident and Life Insurance Company in Louisville, KY. She won the Green River Review first prize for “Wedding Poems,” and her work has appeared in the Kentucky Review, The Louisville Review, and New Millennium Writings. The Moon with the Sun in Her Eye, a collection of poems published by Fleur de Lys Press of Louisville, is her latest book. She serves as an advisor to Sarabande Books and as a member of the Corporation at Yaddo.
	Irene Latham, the Alabama State Poetry Society’s Poet of the Year for 2006, is poetry editor for Birmingham Arts Journal. Her first full-length collection of poems, What Came Before, was published last year. She serves as the program chair of the Alabama Writers Conclave.
	Martin V. Melosi is professor of history at the University of Houston and editor of the Environment volume of the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. His other books include Energy Metropolis: An Environmental History of Houston and the Gulf Coast (2007) and Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform and the Environment, 1880-2000 (rev. ed., 2005). For more than thirty years, he has been interested in the intersection of urbanization, technology, and the environment, and the policy implications thereof.
	Tanya Michna is the author of Necessary Arrangements and the upcoming Baggage Claim, both published by New American Library. She has written short stories, business articles, and critical essays for BenBella's Smart Pop nonfiction series. Under the pseudonym Tanya Michaels, she also writes humorous women's fiction and romance novels that have been translated into approximately a dozen languages for distribution around the world.
	Mary Ann Neeley served the Mongtomery area as longtime director of the Landmarks Foundation of Mongtomery, Inc., and is the author several books including Old Alabama Town, an Illustrated Guide; Capital City Corners, and, most recently, Montgomery & the River Region: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow.
	R. A. Nelson is the author of the young adult novels Teach Me and Breathe My Name, which have both been nominated to the YALSA Best Books for Young Adults lists. Nelson was also chosen as a Horn Book Newcomer in 2005, and his writing has been recognized by the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, BookSense Kid Picks, the Miami Herald Best Books of the Year, teenreads.com Best Books of the year, the Michigan Library Thumbs Up! list (Top Twenty), and other award lists. His third book, a romantic ghost story called Days of Little Texas, is slated to be published in spring 2009 by Knopf.
	Don Noble is a regular book reviewer for Alabama Public Radio and host of “Bookmark” on Alabama Public Television. He is editor of Climbing Mt. Cheaha: Emerging Alabama Writers and professor emeritus of English at the University of Alabama.
	Jim Noles resides in Birmingham, AL where he is a partner in the law firm Balch & Bingham LLP. A freelance writer as well, his articles have appeared in such newspapers and magazines as the New York Times, Urban Land, Preservation, and Alabama Heritage. His latest book is A Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America -- One State Quarter at a Time (Da Capo, 2008). .
	Rachel Ochs is currently in her third year of teaching at Calvary Christian Academy in Montgomery Alabama. She graduated from Pensacola Christian College, and remained for two years to teach in its Speech and Broadcasting department. In her spare time, she enjoys exploring Alabama historical areas, music fesitvals, and reading good books.
	Robert Olmstead is the author of River Dogs, Soft Water, A Trail of Heart’s Blood Wherever We Go, America by Land, and Stay Here With Me. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and an NEA grant, he is a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University. His new book is Coal Black Horse, published by Algonquin.
	Ashley Paige joined CBS 8 News in the fall of 2003 and anchors CBS 8 This Morning and CBS 8 News at Noon. Ashley is very active in the community. She is a Montgomery Chamber of Commerce Ambassador, a participant in the Big Brother/Big Sister program and serves as a board member for the Montgomery Arts Council and the Montgomery Ballet. Ashley also chairs many events with organizations ranging from the Montgomery Humane Society to the Kidney Foundation.
	Gov. John Patterson earned a law degree in 1949 and joined his father in law practice in Phenix City, AL. Following military service in Korea, Patterson returned to Phenix City in time to help his father campaign for Alabama attorney general. The elder Patterson won the Democratic nomination but was shot to death in Phenix City in June 1954. His son replaced him on the Democratic ticket, and in November the 33-year-old John Patterson was elected as Alabama's chief legal officer. In 1958, he won election as Alabama's 49th Governor, becoming the youngest Governor to ever hold the office, at age 37. His biography, by Warren Trest, was published this spring.
	Tito Perdue was born in 1938 in Chile, South America, where his father, an Alabama native, was employed as an electrical engineer with the Braden Copper Company. In 1991 his first published novel, Lee, was issued by Four Walls Eight Windows. In 1994 his published the novel The New Austerities, followed by Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture, a story based upon the history of his maternal forebears.The Sweet-Scented Manuscript, a more-than-semi-autobiographical novel was published in 2004 by Baskerville Publishers, and in 2007 a paperback edition of Lee was issued by The Overlook Press. Tito's most recent novel, Fields of Asphodel, also appeared in 2007 from the same publisher.
	Doug Phillips is host of APT’s “Discovering Alabama”. He has pioneered many initiatives for education and conservation, including the nationally recognized model for wildland conservation, the Alabama Forever Wild Program. He is author of the national award-winning Discovering Alabama Wetlands and Discovering Alabama Forests.
	Gin Phillips is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in numerous magazines. Her interviews have included James Carville, George Stephanopoulos, Dee Dee Myers, Sally Ride, Hamilton Jordan, and John Cleese. Her first novel is The Well and the Mine.
	Davis Raines is an accomplished Nashville songwriter who's been called "one of the few real treasures left in Music City." He has released his third and most personal CD, Going to Montgomery. Produced by Tricia Walker and released on APS Records, it continues Raines' long, passionate career of creating soulful music that tells a story, and most of those stories begin Down South.
	Philip Shirley's award-winning work includes fiction, poetry, speech, and feature writing, as well as production of literary programming for public radio. His first short story collection, Oh Don't You Cry For Me, is being released by Jefferson Press on April 1. His writing has been anthologized in Stories from the Blue Moon Café IV and appeared in Wind, Aura, Art Gulf Coast, POEM, storySouth, Thicket, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. Born in Alabama, he lives near Madison, MS, on the Barnett Reservoir with his wife, the painter Virginia Shirley. He is CEO of a consulting and marketing firm.
	Louie Skipper's latest collection of poems is The Work Ethic of the Common Fly published by Settlement House. His previous collections include Deaths that Travel with the Weather, and Fourth Watch of the Night. His poems and essays have appeared widely in literary journals, including Black Warrior Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Louisville Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and others. He is an Episcopal priest and serves as Chaplain to Montgomery area colleges and as the Vicar of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Dallas County.
	Patricia Sprinkle grew up in North Carolina and northern Florida, graduated from Vassar College, and spent a winter writing in the Scottish Highlands before settling in Atlanta. She has lived in Atlanta most of her adult life Although as an adult she has also lived in Chicago and Miami, her mysteries and novels reflect her love for and the strength of her Southern roots. She is the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books, including the newly released What Are You Wearing to Die? A Thoroughly Southern Mystery.
	Jeanie Thompson's books include three collections of poetry, White for Harvest: New and Selected Poems, Witness, and How to Enter the River, and the essay collection The Remembered Gate: Memoirs by Alabama Writers, co-edited with Jay Lamar. Since 1994, Jeanie has directed the Alabama Writers' Forum, a statewide literary arts organization and teaches in the Spalding University Brief Residency MFA Writing Program. She is the editor of Gathering Up Our Voices, an anthology of the first ten years of Harper Lee Award winners, published in conjunction with the Alabama Year of the Arts.
	Warren Trest is the author of the recently published biography of former Alabama governor John Patterson, Nobody But the People. A retired USAF senior historian, he was also a combat reporter and historian in the Korea, Viet Nam, and the Cold War. His other works include Wings of Denial The Alabama Air National Guard’s Covert Role in the Bay of Pigs and the novel Missing in Paradise: A Jake Falcon Mystery.
	Natasha Trethewey won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for her third collection of poetry, Native Guard. Her first book, Domestic Work (Graywolf Press, 2000), won the inaugural 1999 Cave Canem poetry prize (selected by Rita Dove), and her second collection, Bellocq's Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002), received the 2003 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2003 and 2000, and in journals such as Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and The Southern Review, among others.
	Joseph Trimble is a storyteller and author. His books include Marty and the Million Man March and Marty Makes a Difference. Trimble lives with his family in Montgomery.
	Doug Van Gundy has been an elephant keeper, a copywriter, a country radio disk jockey, a letterpress operator, an old-time fiddler, and a TV game show winner. He currently teaches English at Fairmont State University. His poems and essays have appeared in Ecotone, The Lullwater Review, The Fretboard Journal and Goldenseal. Red Hen Press recently published A Life Above Water, his first book of poems.
	Sue Walker is co-editor of Whatever Remembers Us: An Anthology of Alabama Poets with John Chambers, published in 2007 by Negative Capability Press. She is known nationally and internationally for her poetry, as well as for her critical articles on poets and writers such as James Dickey, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, and Carson McCullers. Her latest poetry collection, Blood Will Bear Your Name, received the Book of the Year Award from the Alabama State Poetry Society.
	Deborah Wiles’s newest book is The Aurora County All-Stars. Her first novel, Love Ruby Lavender, was an ALA Notable Children's Book, a Children's BookSense 76 Pick, and a New York Public Library Book for Reading and Sharing. Her picture books are One Wide Sky (Harcourt, 2003), a Children’s Book of the Month Club selection, and Freedom Summer (Simon & Schuster, 2001), winner of the Coretta Scott King/Steptoe award for illustrator Jerome Lagarrigue. Her novel Each Little Bird That Sings was a National Book Award finalist.
	Charles Reagan Wilson is director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and coeditor, with William Ferris, of the original Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.
	Jake Adam York’s work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, Crab Orchard Review, and Shenandoah, as well as the website Poetry Daily. He is a contributing editor for Shenandoah and the poetry editor for storySouth. His first collection is Murder Ballads and his second collection, A Murmuration of Starlings, was published this January.
	Joe York is a photographer and producer/director of documentary films at the University of Mississippi Center for Documentary Projects. He is the author of With Signs Following: Photographs from the Southern Religious Roadside.