Dr. Joy Juanita Jackson (1928-1996) was an acclaimed educator, historian, and author. The first female elected president of the Louisiana Historical Association, Jackson was awarded the James William Rivers Prize from the University of Southwestern Louisiana Center for Louisiana Studies in recognition of her contributions to Louisiana culture. In addition, she was curator of photographs, papers, and memorabilia from such figures as former governor Jimmie Davis and former United States representative James Morrison.
Jackson became a professor at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. She was the director for the Center for Regional Studies for which she had started the oral history program as well as being the university archivist. Prior to her professorship, Jackson taught at Nicholls State University and wrote feature articles for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
She received her bachelor's degree in journalism and her master's and doctoral degrees in American history from Tulane University. Jackson died at the age of sixty-seven and was buried in her hometown of New Orleans.
This biography is not yet written.
Please see the press release(s) below for information.
Although he took art courses throughout high school and in college at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, Terry “Jake” Jacobsen considers himself mainly a self-taught artist. Following his college experience, he enlisted in the Air Force and served four years in Vietnam as a paratrooper. In 1996, he joined the Old West Society of Minnesota, an Old West reenactment/living history group that he has since traveled and performed with throughout the country.
In addition to his work as a graphic designer, illustrator, and draftsman, Mr. Jacobsen has worked as a model, a makeup artist, and as an extra in commercials and film. He has been self-employed since 1980.
Born in Billings, Montana, in 1946 and raised in Hopkins, Minnesota, Mr. Jacobsen now resides in Tombstone, Arizona. He is the father of two daughters and a grandfather to Grayson. The Littlest Cowboy's Christmas is his first book.
A professional illustrator and cartoonist, Stan Jaskiel has illustrated more than twenty children’s books in addition to coloring books, magazines, and T-shirts. Jaskiel received a bachelor of fine arts in industrial design from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He also attended the Wentworth Institute of Technology.
Jaskiel was a senior industrial designer for Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard, Massachusetts, where he served as a project leader. Since 1992, he has been self-employed with his company, Stan Jaskiel Cartoons. In addition to illustrating, he regularly teaches a course on drawing for design. His illustrations have received an iParenting Media Award.
Jaskiel lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife Judy, where he illustrates for a variety of clients.
Robert Jeanfreau grew up in New Orleans, attending Jesuit High School and later Loyola University where he earned a degree in psychology and became proficient in German. He went on to attend LSU Medical School in New Orleans and specialized in internal medicine. He and his brother, Wallace, opened a practice near Mercy Hospital in 1989. After a tour of duty with the National Guard in Desert Storm, Jeanfreau returned to New Orleans and the brothers moved their practice near East Jefferson General Hospital. During Hurricane Katrina, he and fellow doctors remained in the hospital for over a month caring for patients.
After Katrina, Dr. Jeanfreau lived on Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans. Every day he drove by the statue dedicated to Charles Gayarré. At that time he knew nothing about that statue, but and embarrassingly little about the city’s history in general. One day he stopped to look at it more closely and that evening did some online reading. His interest was piqued and he continued his research at the library. It was there he discovered a book, written in the 1950s, about New Orleans’s statues. It was limited in scope and history. Dr. Jeanfreau decided to photograph the statues of New Orleans himself and write his own book. It was an undertaking that took nearly five years to complete. As a result of his interest in the statues and his research, Dr. Jeanfreau joined the Louisiana Historical Society where he remains an active member.
Since his experiences during Katrina, Dr. Jeanfreau has also been certified as a principle investigator involved in clinical pharmaceutical research and has co-authored three articles on immunization in scientific journals. He lives with his wife, Andrea, in Metairie, Louisiana, and continues to practice medicine with his brother.He has previously served on the South Carolina Coastal Council and is a past president of the Williamsburg County Bar Association and the Williamsburg County Chamber of Commerce. He has also served as chairman of the following boards and commissions: Williamsburg Academy, architectural review board for the town of Kingstree, beautification commission for the town of Kingstree, and the Williamsburg County board of voter registration.
Jenkinson has been involved in residential real estate for more than twenty-five years and has renovated four historic houses in downtown Charleston. He is the author of St. Albans Episcopal Church: A Short History of a Small Mission, published by St. Albans. This publication was used to compel the South Carolina department of archives and history to erect a historical marker on the grounds of the church.
Jenkinson received a BA in English from the Citadel and a law degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law. The son of an attorney, he entered private practice with his father and brother after being honorably discharged from the reserves as a captain. Although he has lived in a small South Carolina town nearly all of his life, his travels have led him to thirty-one different countries.
Capt. Donald R. Jermann entered the U.S. Navy as an officer candidate in December 1943. He retired from active duty in 1975 after thirty-two years of service, at which time he began a second career as a civil servant in the Navy Department. During his tenure he was twice awarded the Secretary of the Navy's Distinguished Civilian Medal.
In 1946, he was commissioned upon completion of the University of Michigan's NROTC program, and he subsequently served on Patrol Craft 582 and the cruisers Rochester, St. Paul, and Helena. He was also a member of the staffs of Commander Seventh Fleet and Commander Naval Forces Japan, the Office of Chief of Naval Operations, and the Naval Security Group.
Some highlights of his active-duty years include his participation in both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts; his selection for intensive Russian language training at the outset of the Cold War; and his role as a founding member of the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor of the National Security Agency.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Captain Jermann attended John Carroll University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Maryland, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in government. A longtime Civil War buff, Captain Jermann has visited all Civil War battle sites in Maryland and Pennsylvania and many in the state of Virginia.
He currently lives with his wife in Laurel, Maryland, where he works as a part-time consultant to the Department of Defense.
David E. Johnson was in the midst of a high-profile law career when he discovered an unexpected second vocation: writing. “My wife was in her second pregnancy and was having trouble sleeping,” Johnson recalls. “She was always teasing me about reading so much history, and she said, ‘why don't you tell me some history stories?’” Instead of putting her to sleep, they captured her attention. “She said I should write them down.”
Johnson eventually published articles in Southern Partisan, American History, and Columbiad. While researching Douglas Southall Freeman for a Columbiad article, Johnson was surprised that there was no definitive biography of the legendary historian and newspaperman. Freeman (1886-1953) twice won the Pulitzer Prize for his monumental biographies, R. E. Lee and George Washington; he simultaneously edited the Richmond News Leader, made twice-daily radio news broadcasts, and taught journalism at Columbia University. Mary Tyler Cheek McClenahan, Freeman's eldest daughter, admits that several historians had considered the task, but only Johnson prevailed, “I thought it was just manna from heaven. He was the ideal person. His method of research is so identical to Father's.”
Throughout the writing of Douglas Southall Freeman, David E. Johnson enjoyed the assistance and support of the Freeman family. He was allowed access to Freeman's copious papers—more than 244 boxes in the Library of Congress alone. Johnson also conducted interviews with many of Freeman's surviving relatives, especially Ms. McClenahan, and coworkers, including nationally syndicated columnist James Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick was delighted with the finished book: “David Johnson's even-handed biography of Douglas Southall Freeman exactly limns an extraordinary man. The Doc, as we newsmen knew him, would be pleased.”
David E. Johnson currently serves as senior counsel to the attorney general of Virginia. He was graduated from the College of William and Mary and the T. C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond. He lives with his wife, Holly, and their three children in Midlothian, Virginia. Douglas Southall Freeman is his first book.
Layne Johnson has drawn and painted the world around him since he was a teenager. A professional artist and graphic designer, he has created art for more than a dozen children's books, several of which have earned him honors and awards. Johnson also illustrated the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Seal Award winner Brian's Bird.
A freelance illustrator for more than twenty years, Johnson earned a bachelor of fine arts from the University of Houston. He is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and the Picture Book Artists Association and speaks at schools and libraries, teaching children how to make their own books.
Picturing himself as an adventurer more than an artist, Johnson sees every book as a new quest for readers. When not designing children's books, Johnson enjoys gardening, spending time with his family, golfing, and traveling to historic sites. He lives with his wife and family in Houston, Texas.
Phil Johnson truly loved New Orleans. For thirty-five years he was an on-air editorialist for WWL-TV, the New Orleans CBS affiliate. He was well known for his daily editorial on WWL (the longest-running commentary on American television), his passion for cooking, and his authentically New Orleans-flavored writing.
A native New Orleanian, Johnson attended Jesuit High School and graduated from Loyola University New Orleans in 1950 with a degree in journalism. He then attended Harvard University as a Nieman Scholar and was later named to the selection committee to determine future Nieman Scholars.
Johnson received many awards, including three Peabody Awards, an Emmy, the Integritas Vitae Award (Loyola University's highest honor), which recognized him as “an individual who possesses a high moral character in a lifetime of unselfish service without expectation of material reward or public recognition.” A member of the Louisiana Broadcaster's Hall of Fame, he was also honored with several Gabriel Awards from the Catholic Broadcasting Association and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Press Club of New Orleans.
Johnson passed away in March 2010, at the age of eighty.
In 2000, critically acclaimed photographer and musician Richard Leo Johnson left Nashville, Tennessee, and settled in Savannah to resume his photography business. After more than a decade on the road performing at concerts in the United States, Canada, and Europe, he was looking to stay closer to home. The move to Savannah resulted in new relationships with many periodicals, book publishers, architects, and interior designers. Johnson's work has appeared in Coastal Living, Cottage Living, This Old House magazine, Southern Accents, and Architectural Record.
Annie Fellows Johnston's life exemplifies success and perseverance: she wrote over forty books (one was even made into a major motion picture) during a time period when it was not customary for women to be so successful, she was a devoted wife to a husband who died only a few years after their marriage, and she was a stepmother to three children, for whom she continued to care after the death of their father.
Mrs. Johnston is most famous for her thirteen-book Little Colonel Series. In 1935, Twentieth Century Fox released The Little Colonel based on the first book in the series, The Little Colonel. The movie starred Shirley Temple and Lionel Barrymore.
Born on a farm in a small town in Indiana on May 15, 1863, Annie sharpened her writing skills as a young girl. Her father, a minister, died when she was two but left an exstensive collection of reading material, and her mother, an advocate for women's education, encouraged Annie to teach and go to college. She attended the University of Iowa for a year, taught for three years, worked as a private secretary, and traveled through New England and Europe before she married a cousin, who encouraged her to write, and became a mother to his three young children.
Mrs. Johnston's unique writing style fictionalized real people and experiences. On a visit to Pewee Valley, Kentucky, in 1895, Mrs. Johnston met little Hattie Cochran, “a feisty and stubborn little girl whose spirit and demeanor resembled that of an old-time colonel.” The Little Colonel was born! Mrs. Johnston fell in love with Pewee Valley, and she moved there in 1910 permanently and completed the series.
Mrs. Johnston died on October 5, 1931, in her beloved Pewee Valley.
Ellen Roy Jolly was a coauthor of The Pelican Guide to the Louisiana Capitol (pb F) with James Calhoun. She was a resident of Baton Rouge during the same time that Huey Long was slain within the city limits, and in the book she vividly describes the tense aftermath of the shooting.
The Pelican Guide to the Louisiana Capitol is an ideal guide for on-site observation, appreciation, and understanding of the capitol's art, architecture, and history. It also discusses what is considered the most beautiful of America's fifty statehouses.
Born with an irritating habit of making fun of other people and bred on Louisiana politics, Clay Jones couldn't have chosen a career other than political cartooning. He was born on an army base in Texas and from there went on to live in Louisiana, Illinois, California, and Georgia. In 1990 he moved to Mississippi and shortly after went to work at a weekly newspaper, the Panolian in Batesville, despite his lack of any real newspaper training. He started syndicating his cartoons throughout Mississippi while learning the basics of publishing a weekly newspaper.
In 1995 he went to work for the Daily Leader in Brookhaven as its cartoonist and photographer. He left the Leader in September of 1995 to pursue his cartooning full time. After living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast briefly, he moved to Jackson to be closer to the state's politics and to attend Belhaven College.
Clay Jones has won first place for Best Editorial Cartoon in the Mississippi Press Association's Better Newspaper Contest in 1994 and 1995, the first two years of the competition. He has also won the MPA's Silver Dollar Idea Award in 1995. His work is syndicated in over forty newspapers in Mississippi and has been reprinted in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Washington Post National Weekly Edition, and the Washington Times.
Richard L. Jones has been the executive chef of Richard's Place since 1994. Raised in a strict Southern household with seven older siblings, Chef Jones spent many a Sunday at his deacon father's side watching a traditional meal take shape. His collection of recipes in Supper at Richard's Place: Recipes from the New Southern Table is as much an homage to his father's talents as it is to Chef Jones' love of New York's multiethnic cooking and the constant inspiration he finds in converting his Northern clientele into soul-food fans.
Chef Jones did not plan to follow in his father's footsteps and become a chef. However, his passion for Southern heritage cuisine was never far from his heart. He moved from Georgia to New York when he was twelve years old. While pursuing a career in the music business, he began cooking meals based on his father's recipes. After graduating from high school, Chef Jones started working in Long Island kitchens, washing dishes and eventually cooking. He earned a certificate in culinary arts from the New York Institute of Technology and worked at both restaurants and catering establishments in Manhattan before opening Richard's Place with his wife, Rhonda, in Jamaica, New York.
Chef Jones' strong work ethic, commitment to his customers, and perpetually sunny disposition has made Richard's Place an overwhelming success. He has earned both regional and national accolades, and has appeared over twenty-five times on the Television Food Network. Chef Jones is the recipient of several culinary and community awards, including GQ magazine's Golden Dish Award; the Congressional Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence; Lambda Mu Sorority's Award for Outstanding Service, Cooperation & Commitment to Community; and the Award for Exemplary Economic Development, presented by the Million Man & Woman March Coordinating Council of Queens.
An attorney, cattle runner, and former state senator from Ruston, Louisiana, Bill Jones comes from a long line of Louisiana cowboys. He learned to “cowboy” at an early age by catching wild cows from the woods of Bienville Parish. He spent his college summers in Ohio and Montana raising yearlings, branding cattle, and breaking colts. A love of these experiences led Jones to work cattle in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, New Mexico, Texas, and back home in Louisiana. “Where most folks take up golf, tennis, or skiing,” he explains, “I just kept riding after cows.” Jones has always had a passion for writing and a fascination with the history and personal accounts of “cowboying” in Louisiana.
William Jones, Jr. was born in Ruston in 1947 and attended Louisiana Tech University on a football scholarship, graduating with a bachelor's degree in animal science. He worked in the cattle industry for two years and then attended law school at Louisiana State University. After practicing law in Houston for five years, he returned home to start a lumber business with his brother. Jones spent five months during 1999 completing research and interviewing cowboys at the Gray Ranch in Ged, Louisiana. He later served as a Louisiana state senator, representing Jackson, Lincoln, and Ouachita Parishes from 2000 to 2004.
Jones practices law and runs cattle in Ruston, Louisiana, where he is a member of the Louisiana Cattlemen's Association, the Louisiana Bar Association, the Lincoln Parish Chamber of Commerce, and a lifelong member of Trinity United Methodist Church.
Chef Sonya Jones is the owner of Sweet Auburn Bread Company, where she continues the traditions of southern African American baking. Her desserts have received praise from former President Bill Clinton and Food Network star Rachael Ray. In 2008, she was honored by Ebony magazine’s “Taste of Ebony” awards as one of the nation’s top Black Pastry Chefs.
Jones studied at the Culinary Institute of America and returned to Atlanta after graduating, determined to become a success. She worked with Southern food icon Edna Lewis and opened a bakery, selling made-from-scratch desserts. After receiving rave reviews, Jones began a successful mail-order business. She also runs a catering service and sells a line of private-label jellies and dessert sauces.
Her business was selected as one of the Best Bakeries in the South by Southern Living and has received praise from such publications as Flavors and Taste of the South, among others. Jones has made media appearances on Food Network shows with Rachael Ray and Bobby Flay. When CNN ran a segment about the economic crisis and its effect on small businesses, they dubbed Sweet Auburn “The Little Bakery That Could.” Jones lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Mauriel Phillips Joslyn was born in Manchester, Georgia, and is currently living in Sparta, restoring an 1822 house with her family. Joslyn received her BA in history from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and an MA in history from Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia. One of the reasons Joslyn chose to attend school in Virginia was because it was six miles from the Virginia Military Institute, placing her near many former battlefields, where she could continue to explore her fascination concerning the Civil War. Her husband, who shares her interests, is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute.
Early in her marriage, Joslyn worked at various sales jobs while teaching horse-riding lessons on the side. She also worked for the library at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Her husband's job required the family to move to Summit Point, West Virginia, where they lived in a historic house associated with the Confederacy. During that period, Mauriel worked for the post office in Meadowview, Virginia, and the entire family participated in Civil War reenactments.
Josyln has published several books and articles concerning the Civil War. Her articles have appeared in Gettysburg Magazine, United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine, Georgia Journal, Military Heritage, Irish Sword, and many others. She is a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites, the Blue and Gray Education Association, the Georgia Historical Society, and other groups. Her book Confederate Women is a collection of various women's wartime experiences.
In addition, Joslyn participates in lectures and living-history events on military subjects. Her presentations have taken her to schools, civic groups, and SCY groups, where she often dresses in Confederate costume and brings artifacts to discuss.
As president of the Patrick Cleburne Society, Joslyn is raising money for a statue of General Cleburne to be erected in Ringgold, Georgia. She is currently the vice-chairman of the Georgia Civil War Commission and is writing two nonfiction screenplays about historical personages, one dealing with the Civil War and the other relating to the flying aces of World War I.
An attorney and passionate advocate for the protection of children, Joseph Justice has been in the legal field, in practice ranging from family to criminal law, since 1979. He serves as a special assistant attorney general, county administrator, and county conservator for Paulding County, Georgia. The Georgia Child Placement Conference awarded Justice with the 2005 Special Assistant Attorney General of the Year designation, and the National Court Appointed Special Advocate Association honored him with the Champion for Children Award. In addition to practicing law, he has contributed to several human-interest stories that have been published in local newspapers including the Bright Side Newspaper and the Dallas New Era.
Justice is a member of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of Georgia, and the Paulding County Bar Association. Attending college in Georgia, he graduated with a B.A. in English from LaGrange College in 1973 and earned his J.D. from Woodrow Wilson College of Law, cum laude, in 1978. He enjoys volunteering and has served as Santa Claus for Christmas parties for local foster children. Justice resides with his wife is Dallas, Georgia.
Beth Kander is the president of the Fondren Theatre Workshop, where she teaches acting and writing classes for youth and adults. In addition to serving as the community outreach director for Mad Genius, she is a writer and member of the companys creative team. Kander coordinates such initiatives as Imagination Education, an organization dedicated to making media and arts more accessible to youth.
As a Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellow, Kanders work includes stage plays, screenplays, essays, fiction and nonfiction stories, and freelance reporting. Her writing has been featured in several publications, including Readers Digest and Millsaps Magazine, and she was a contributor to the book Spirituality 101. Kander has been a playwright since her early teens, and her plays have been produced nationally and internationally in venues including the Lexington Arts Center in Lexington, Fn Productions in New York City, 11:11 Theatre Company in Boston, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
Along with being named the Best Jackson Writer by the Jackson Free Press, Kander won the Mississippi Theatre Association Playwright Award, the Eudora Welty New Play Award, the Points of Light National Service Award, and the Audience Award. She is affiliated with such organizations and programs as Off Kilter Comedy, New Stage Theatre, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Mississippi.
Kander earned her bachelors degree from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and a master of social work from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. An improvisational comedian, public speaker, and filmmaker, she lives with her two dogs, Sofia and Dov Muppet, in Jackson, Mississippi.
Yvonne Kauger is a distinguished judge and the former chief justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Justice Kauger, a member of the State Capitol Preservation Commission and the Historical Society of Washita County, is passionate about the history of her home state. She has championed the preservation of Native American art and culture by establishing the Gallery of the Plains Indian as well as Red Earth, a museum she cofounded to showcase Native American art.
First in her class at Oklahoma City University School of Law, she earned her JD in 1969. In 1991, Kauger received an honorary doctorate from OCU. She was appointed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 1984 and served as chief justice from 1997 to 1998.
Kauger has served as presiding judge for the Oklahoma Court on the Judiciary and on the Law School and Bench and Bar Committees of the Oklahoma Bar Association. In 1999, Justice Kauger was awarded the Herbert Harley Award by the American Judicature Society. In 2001, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame.
Justice Kauger resides in Oklahoma. She has a daughter, Jonna, who is a lawyer, and two grandsons, Jay and Winston.
Born in Portland, Oregon, Michele Karl attended Portland State University, where she majored in business and marketing. She eventually settled down in Seattle, Washington, then experienced a temperature shock when she and her family moved to Florida. After five years of unexpected heat, the family settled into Seymour, Tennessee, only a short distance from the Great Smoky Mountains.
Karl has been a freelance writer for some time. Her articles have appeared in dozens of publications, and she has authored numerous books on memorabilia, including Composition & Wood Dolls and Toys, Baby Boomer Dolls—Plastic Playthings of the 1950s and 1960s, and Celebrity Dolls.
In addition to writing and collecting, she enjoys flying with her husband in their twin-engine Cessna 310. They currently reside just outside of Knoxville with their two children, Mathew and Angela, who have already started their own collections of Pez dispensers, magic wands, and Beanie Babies.
In her latest book, What Celebrities Collect!, Michele Karl opens the world of celebrity collectibles to the public. With this admission ticket, many people who have a passion for collecting, and for Hollywood, will find both their cravings are satisfied. Revealed within these pages are Ben Affleck's love of movie soundtracks and Nicolas Cage's collection of European sports cars and comic books. Sometimes amazing, but always entertaining, this book is every Hollywood junkie's dream book.
A self-proclaimed pack rat, Michele Karl adores garage sales. She can't pass one up without experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms. An avid collector of dolls, children's books, and Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, Karl shares one of her many collections in Greetings with Love: The Book of Valentines. Complete with over 200 vintage valentines, this volume reveals interesting tidbits of Valentine's Day history, sprinkled with crafts, poems, and a recipe for chocolate cheesecake that's sure to win someone's heart on February 14.
A Civil War enthusiast and Southern Baptist pastor, Shane E. Kastler was familiar with Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s wartime exploits, but he was fascinated by a different aspect of Forrest’s story—his personal life and spiritual conversion. In an effort to change previous unfair characterizations of Forrest, Kastler presents the seldom-told truth of the atonement and salvation of the famed fighter in a spiritual biography about the general. Through extensive research, he relates these unknown facets of the Confederate soldier’s life in Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Redemption.
Kastler is committed to biblical and expository preaching. His experience in the ministry began more than fifteen years ago when he became involved in church and campus ministries while attending Northeastern State University. He has since served as the chaplain, associate pastor, and senior pastor for a number of churches throughout the Midwest. A native Oklahoman, he serves as Senior Pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Kastler is the author of a weekly religious newspaper column, “Seeking Higher Ground,” for the Linn County News of Pleasanton, Kansas. He also operates and writes a blog, The Narrow Road Blog (www.narrowroadblog.com), which is committed to devotional and theological issues.
Kastler earned his bachelor of business administration degree in accounting from Northeastern State University and his master of divinity degree from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. As the top preaching student in his graduating class, Kastler was awarded the LifeWay Bookstore Preaching Award. He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the National Rifle Association. Kastler enjoys camping and spending time with his wife and three children in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Syd Kearney currently resides in Houston, Texas, where she writes for the Houston Chronicle travel section. Her articles include information on travel destinations in the Houston area and travel to national and international locations, as well as pieces on travel-related issues, such as innkeeping.
A Marmac Guide to Houston and Galveston: 4th Edition offers comprehensive information on transportation, sightseeing, and attractions in an easy-to-use format. The guide provides advice and tips for all types of travelers, including families, students, and international visitors.
Bill Keith is a seasoned journalist with forty years of experience in the field. He has traveled to thirty-five countries and has worked as a war correspondent in Vietnam, an investigative reporter for the Shreveport (LA) Times, and as the city editor for the Shreveport (LA) Journal. During the 1970s, Keith investigated and reported on the crimes of Police Commissioner George D’Artois. His investigative journalism and devotion to the truth earned him both praise and national recognition. Now a full-time writer, he has published numerous books, articles, and biographies.
Keith received his bachelor of arts degree in journalism from Wheaton College and a master of divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Aside from his career in journalism, he served as a Louisiana senator from 1980 to 1984. He resides in Longview, Texas, with his wife, Vivian.
Lauren Malone Keller is a homemaker in New Orleans, a city famous for its cuisine. In her former professional career, she was the vice president and general manager of an industrial-supply distributor. She also worked as a marketing project coordinator at Laitram, LLC, a global manufacturing company. When she and her sister-in-law, Patrice Keller Kononchek, made the transition from businesswomen to stay-at-home moms, they wanted to bring restaurant-quality dishes to their kitchens in a slow-cooker fashion.
Keller completed an immersion program in France and attended Loyola University New Orleans. She graduated magna cum laude with a BA in mass communications and advertising. Along with her husband, Robert, and their son, she lives in New Orleans, where she continues to try new recipes and experiment with her slow cooker.
Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and raised in New Orleans, Rhonda Harrington Kelley is a Baylor University graduate with a doctorate in special education and speech pathology from the University of New Orleans. For fifteen years, Kelley served as director of speech pathology for Ochsner Medical Institutions in New Orleans. She has since accepted the calling to dedicate herself full-time to ministry—writing, speaking, and teaching.
Kelley focuses her own studies on topics such as spiritual discipline, biblical womanhood, and effective communication. For twenty-two years she hosted the locally broadcast radio program A Word for Women, and she has authored and co-authored several books, including Divine Discipline and Don’t Miss the Blessing, both published by Pelican. She travels extensively, speaking to groups across the country ranging in size from small-town congregations to urban mega-churches.
Kelley serves as an adjunct professor of women’s ministry at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where her husband, Dr. Chuck Kelley, is president. She is also the associate director for Innovative Evangelism, a local non-profit evangelical organization. She and her husband live in New Orleans.
A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, John R. Kemp received his bachelor's degree from Loyola University in New Orleans, then earned his master's degree from the University of Southern Mississippi. A former staff writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, he has contributed to several publications, including Southern Accents, Fodor's, Time Out Guides, Louisiana Life, ARTNews, and Art & Antiques.
Prior to joining the newspaper in 1978, Kemp was chief curator of the Louisiana State Museum's Historical Center in New Orleans. While there, he wrote and organized several major exhibitions, including Louisiana from Colony to State: A Bicentennial Exhibition. He now covers the New Orleans visual arts scene for the local public television channel's weekly entertainment show Steppin' Out.
Alan Flattmann's French Quarter Impressions includes a foreword by E. John Bullard, the Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art, as well as more than 120 color images portraying everything from the French Market to St. Louis Cathedral. The author provides an in-depth look at Alan Flattmann's work, artistic career, and his interpretation of the world around him through art. It also includes an introduction describing the French Quarter, from the people and architecture to the unique mood, as well as an historical essay on the famous New Orleans neighborhood.
Currently an associate director at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Kemp resides in Covington, Louisiana, with his wife.
Bret Kenyon is a national sales assistant for the CBS-affiliate WJTV in Jackson, Mississippi. A former art administrator, he once served as the executive director of Covenant School for the Arts. He has also developed a career as a writer, contributing articles to such publications as the Jackson Free Press and Parents & Kids Magazine.
Kenyon has performed with a rock cover band and as an improvisational comedian with the comedy troupe Off Kilter. He actively participates in several community and professional theater companies and is affiliated with Fondren Theatre Workshop and Center Players.
A Pittsburgh native, Kenyon earned his BA in theater from Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi. He resides in Jackson and enjoys traveling and hiking.
—Walter Sullivan
“In James Everett Kibler we find a member of a quickly diminishing breed: the man of letters.”—Southern Partisan
James Everett Kibler is a novelist, poet, and professor of English at the University of Georgia, where he teaches popular courses in Southern literature, examining such figures as William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Wendell Berry, and Larry Brown. Born and raised in upcountry South Carolina, Kibler spends much of his spare time tending to the renovation of an 1804 plantation home and the reforestation of the surrounding acreage. This home served as the subject of his first book, Our Fathers' Fields: A Southern Story, for which he was awarded the prestigious Fellowship of Southern Writers Award for Nonfiction in 1999 and the Southern Heritage Society's Award for Literary Achievement.
Kibler received his doctorate from the University of South Carolina, and his poetry has been honored by the Poetry Society of South Carolina and has appeared in publications throughout the country. In October 2004, the League of the South bestowed on him the Jefferson Davis Lifetime Achievement Award.
Kibler enjoys gardening, organic farming, and research into Southern history and culture. An avid preservationist, he prescribes to Allen Tate's comment that “the task of the civilized intelligence is perpetual salvage.” He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Southern Garden History Society, the League of the South, and the William Gilmore Simms Society. He is listed in Contemporary Writers', “Who's Who in America,” and “Who's Who in the World.” He divides his time between Whitmire, South Carolina, and Athens, Georgia.
Benjamin King is the kind of person who seems to always have the question "What if . . ." on his lips. As an author of the critically acclaimed Civil War thrillers A Bullet For Lincoln and A Bullet For Stonewall, he has taken characters from the past and speculated on new relationships between them. This has resulted in his two novels that have essentially rewritten the sequence of events during the Civil War—or at least put an extraordinary spin on perceptions of it. What makes King so successful is his drive for research and his experience in military history.
His skills have served him equally well in his third novel, as he has targeted his sights on WWII, rather than the War Between the States. In The Loki Project, the fate of the Fatherland lies in just one man—not Adolf Hitler, but Dr. Maximilian Lamm, professor of physics, SS officer, and would-be inventor of the atomic bomb. Again, King weaves his story so that fictional characters interact with historical figures including Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler, and Wilhelm Canaris.
King's love affair with history and the military is a lifelong obsession. After graduating from the University of Connecticut with a degree in history, King enlisted in the army. His eleven-year tour of duty took him out of the U.S. for eight years, including one year of service in the Vietnam War, where he served with the 101st Airborne Division (the Screaming Eagles), and was awarded both the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.
Today, King serves as command historian for the U. S. Army Transportation Center and Fort Eustis. Hiss military service has included work with the Pershing missile systems, and his experience and knowledge have led to published articles in Field Artillery Journal and Vietnam magazine, as well as an appearance on the Discovery Channel's Machines That Won the War.
King's expertise in all manner of things military has given him the ability to develop the compelling characters and intriguing scenarios that propel all of his novels.
A former college professor, Robert Kirk could not support his love of travel with his teacher's salary. After spending a large chunk of his savings on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Europe, Kirk met several Americans who were traveling Europe for free. From that moment, he spent the next thirty years collecting free-travel secrets.
Kirk has logged more than 500,000 travel miles using his free tips, all of which are totally legal. His book, You Can Travel Free: Second Edition, details his many techniques and tips for vacationing at little or no cost.
A former Lake County, Louisiana, resident, Kirk now lives with his family in Santa Rosa, California. He continues to travel using his free-travel knowledge and plans to do so more extensively after retirement.
Barbara Hallman Kissinger has been freelancing as an author and artist since 1983. She has enjoyed a long career in the crafts and collectibles field. The images found in her titles come from her own personal library of books, postcards, and illustrations. In more than twenty years of collecting, Kissinger has amassed over four hundred books, seven hundred postcards, and four hundred illustrations from newspapers, books, and magazines. This artwork, from across the United States and Europe, dates from the last half of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century.
Kissinger has a particular interest in Christmas collectibles. She designed and marketed her own line of wooden folk-art Santas that were sold in thirty states. In addition to researching and collecting materials about the history of Christmas, Kissinger, dressed as Mrs. Claus, has given holiday presentations to schoolchildren.
Kissinger's second book, Christmas Merrymaking, was a finalist for the 2008 PMA Benjamin Franklin Awards. Her other design projects include embroidery patterns for VSM Sewing, Inc. and wooden craft items for Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Crafts. Kissinger and her work have also been featured in Country Home, Country Living, and the Des Moines Register. In addition to crafting wooden Santas, Kissinger is also a painter and photographer. She is a charter member of the Art Guild of Burlington, Iowa, and has exhibited her paintings in New York and throughout the Midwest.
A great-grandmother, Kissinger resides in Burlington, Iowa.
Miss Allyne Haynes Marshall Petty (affectionately known as Mama Pet) continued the Southern tradition of passing her knowledge down from her generation of women to the next. Hers was good, practical advice on how to live with yourself and with others. Her daughter, author Marillyn Taylor Klam, wants to take this tradition one step further by dispersing this wit and wisdom not only to her own daughter, but to a much larger audience. With this purpose in mind, she has written her new book, My Mama Always Said . . . : A Book of Southernisms.
A true Southerner, Mrs. Klam was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and has lived most of her life in the small town of Monroe, Louisiana. In addition to the sage advice and good humor of Mama Pet, the author has an abundance of personal experience to draw upon as well. For more than 20 years, she wrote a column covering social, civic, and cultural events for the Sunday Morning World. Later, she worked for 10 more years in the same capacity for the Ouachita Citizen. She clearly has had her finger on the pulse of Southern living throughout her life.
Marillyn Taylor Klam takes us back to a more genteel way of thinking, where rules had good reasons and women wanted to be ladies. She presents a collection of quotes, biblical scriptures, and autobiographical accounts that are bound to bring tears to the eyes and smiles to the lips of readers.
A frequent traveler, Mrs. Klam still contributes articles on her travels or various social functions to her local newspaper. She has never forgotten the things her mama always said.
Jack M. Kneece is a longtime author and newspaperman whose news reporting career started with United Press International in Atlanta, Georgia. A seasoned journalist with an impressive list of credentials, Kneece has worked with publications across the world, with his work having appeared domestically in California, Alaska, Washington, D.C., Louisiana, and Virginia newspapers. He was a congressional reporter with the Washington Star, a national editor for the Washington Times, and in the Washington bureau of the Associated Press on Capitol Hill. For his work with the Oakland Tribune in California, he was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the Alameda Newspaper Group.
In the 1960s, Kneece sold his first major story to Playboy Magazine and was the first reporter to land an interview with Bobby Baker during the Baker/Lyndon B. Johnson scandal of 1967. Kneece also worked internationally to establish Singapore's afternoon newspaper and served as a correspondent in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Kneece graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in English and a minor in journalism. He is the author of Family Treason: The Walker Spy Case, which has sold more than twenty-eight thousand copies. He writes for Go magazine of Charlotte, North Carolina, a Triple-A publication. In 2005, at the request of his alma mater, Kneece began teaching journalism as an adjunct professor. He has since left academia and devotes his time to writing. He lives in Peak, South Carolina.
A native of Michigan, Fred B. Kniffen was born in 1900 and grew up in the upper Midwest. He studied at the University of California at Berkeley under cultural geographer Carl Sauren and anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, and did his doctoral work on a combination of geography and anthropology. The work he accomplished for his doctoral degree provided the basis for his interest and expertise in folk geography.
Mr. Kniffen joined the teaching staff at Louisiana State University in 1929, and lectured on geography and anthropology. Later in his career at LSU he obtained the title of Boyd Professor Emeritus. Today LSU has commemorated a laboratory in his name, the Fred B. Kniffen Cultural Resources Laboratory.
In his many years at LSU, Mr. Kniffen was a pioneer in what he called Folk Buildings, old buildings that are a unique part of a region's landscape. A Folk Building's type, form, and structure can be used to trace a people's cultural origins. He was regarded as Louisiana's foremost authority on the subject of indigenous cultures and is considered the founder of American folk geography.
Mr. Kniffen passed away in 1993. In his long, distinguished career, he managed to write some 125 articles and books, all covering his exceptional range of interests. Two of his articles were published in the Louisiana History journal.
He received an honorary presidency to the Association of American Geography, the same group that presented him with an Honors Award in 1978. The Pioneer America Society presents a book award in his honor, the Fred B. Kniffen Book Award. The award is given to the best new book published about the North American cultural landscape.
The various subjects of his writing include folk houses, covered bridges, outdoor folk ovens, log construction, and other items of traditional material culture. In his book The Indians of Louisiana, Mr. Kniffen follows the journeys of the first Indians to come to Louisiana and the cultural impact they had on the region.
Lucian Lamar Knight's love of his native Georgia was a constant in his seemingly itinerant professional life. His roots were there, having been born in Atlanta in 1868, and he was graduated from the University of Georgia in 1888. Perhaps his father, George Walton Knight, who was a Confederate general, lawyer, and cotton merchant, nursed his love for the South. Whatever the reason, Knight's affection for the history and people of his native state was never far from his heart.
An accomplished attorney, newspaperman, and minister, Knight hopscotched professionally from one vocation to another. He left the legal profession to join the Atlanta Constitution. That began a series of moves landing him in Washington, D.C., Europe, Los Angeles, and finally back to Georgia. In a seemingly perfect fit of interest and skill, he became archivist of Georgia state records in 1913.
In the preface of Georgia's Landmarks, Memorials, and Legends, Knight recounts his research adventures in uncovering the wealth of information contained in the compilation. Four years of his leisure time were spent poring over court documents, old newspaper articles, and burial ground tombstones, all to accurately recount the history of his beloved home state. Originally published in 1913 and 1914, this work stands as an accurate historical reference of Georgia at that time.
He died in 1933 at the age of sixty-five and is remembered in the American National Biography as a writer, poet, historian, speaker, and master of ceremonies.
Vic Knight is a rare find in Florida—he's a native. Not only was he born in the Sunshine State, but so were nine generations ahead of him, going back to 1785 when Florida was still a Spanish colony. His forefathers have been founding fathers of some of Florida's communities. He even speculates that his grandfather sat in the same state senate that Henry Flager supposedly paid off for a bill that would allow him to divorce his wife. With a family history like that, there is no doubt that Knight is a real Florida cracker.
He examines some of Florida's most infamous characters and con men in his second book, Florida Scams. His first book, Vic Knight's Florida, is a preserved history of the state, purified of the myths and misconceptions, but colored well with his sharp-tongued wit. However, it is not his writings that have made him famous from peninsula to panhandle. Knight is best known for his speaking appearances and as the voice of Big Band Radio of the Palm Beaches.
Over more than 22 years in radio, he has been a deejay, band leader, general manager, and most recently owner of four stations in Delray Beach, Gainesville, and Daytona Beach. Knight has since sold off all but WDBF in Delray Beach. It remains the home base for his syndicated big band radio show “Seven Decades of Sounds” heard in cities throughout the eastern third of the country.
His big band orchestras have toured all over the country. At one time he was based solely out of Indianapolis, where he operated seventeen dance orchestras. He has played with and produced shows with some of the swing era's greatest names like Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Mitch Miller, Mel Torme, and Woody Herman.
As a public speaker, he has been asked to travel to all corners of the state. Charity benefits, civic clubs, and library association meetings are part of the many audiences he entertains with his wisdom, lore, and humor. He has spoken to statewide organizations from the Florida Citrus Commission to the state PTA's annual legislative breakfast. Much like his music and writing, his speaking is geared toward bringing back the past for those who remember it well, and implanting it in the memories of those who will recall it for the future.
Throughout his career, Harry B. Knights has written so that his ideas “transmit from my mind through the remote media of a book to the minds of children and families.” He achieves this through his concentration on Saint Nicholas and his origins. The first of the Nicholas Stories series began with a college writing assignment in 1970.
Parents and grandparents know well that timeless tales generate endless questions about our holiday traditions, such as “Where did Saint Nicholas come from?” “How does he visit so many children in just one night?” “Why does he leave gifts for girls and boys?” The Nicholas Stories series answers these questions about Christmas in a way that shares the true special spirit of the holiday.
The
Boy with a Wish: The Nicholas Stories #1, Nicholas, whose simple gift of
love is seen by angels, wishes for a lasting reward that affects the world
forever. In Mr. Knights' second book, The First Flight of Saint Nicholas: The Nicholas Stories #2,
Nicholas discovers a group of elves who cannot get along and soon helps them
find a way to work together to fulfill the wishes of children all over the
world. The Maiden Voyage of Kris Kringle: The Nicholas Stories #3
offers readers Mr. Knights' story of how young Kris Kringle became Mrs. Claus.
In Luigi and the Lost Wish: The Nicholas Stories #4, Nicholas
teaches the miracle of forgiveness when one elf loses a child's wish list.
Nicholas and those who help him have become a world of their own.
Harry B. Knights enjoys traveling the country, speaking
with teachers, students, and people from all walks of life, and lives with his
wife, Christine, in
Laurie Knowlton was born in Cleveland, Ohio. The spring of her fifth grade year, her parents bought a campground, an event that would shape her life. She fondly remembers summers helping her parents out at the R-Farm Lake Club, "a clean family-oriented place." It was there she says she had her first job, learned the importance of good people skills, and fell in love with the country. Her parents owned the property until she was in high school.
Mrs. Knowlton had been interested in writing early on. She even applied for a position at American Greeting Cards before she decided to become a teacher and attend college at Hillsdale College. It was there she met her husband-to-be (in the first week of school, by the way), but they were not to be married until her graduation.
Mrs. Knowlton and her husband moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, and then relocated to Detroit, where their first daughter, Charlotte, was born. They then moved to Houston, Texas, and loving "the Texas culture, the warmth of the people, and the beauty of the land," they remained for seven years.
On a trip back home to Ohio, Laurie decided to visit her parents' ranch for old time's sake. What she found was a dilapidated version of the idyllic camp she remembered. Vines sadly draped many of the buildings; it had gone wild. Upset at the state of her childhood home, Laurie decided to ask about its owners. She was pleasantly surprised to find that the property was for sale. She talked her husband and family into moving back to the ranch, and one month later, they were happily back at the farm for good.
She named the ranch Roots 'n Wings, because she feels that those are the two most important things that you can give your children. Roots 'n Wings Ranch is "presently used as a writer's retreat, a summer daycamp for kids, a conference center, and a great place to raise her kids."
It was while in Texas that Laurie got the idea for Why Cowboys Sleep with Their Boots On, watching a cowboy being interviewed about his attire. Fascinated, she jotted down the book's beginnings on a diaper box.
Busy with instructing daycamps and with her writing, Laurie is also a spokesperson and demonstrator for Elmer's GluColors, a division of Borden, Inc. She recently completed a project book designed to guide children through fun, creative activities using Elmer's GluColors and will be making appearances to explain how to create interesting crafts using the glue. And of course, she'll be promoting her books to boot.
John James Knudsen was born in Great Falls, Montana, in 1922. A child of a Dutch immigrant father and an Irish immigrant mother, he was six years old when the Great Depression began. In 1940, he studied art at Woodbury College in Los Angeles, and for the last nine months of college he worked the graveyard shift at Lockheed, bucking rivets on P-38 fighter planes and Hudson bombers. Inspired by Pearl Harbor, he decided to join the service. This is a candid story of how pilots were trained in the early Army Air Corps.
Knudsen was initially rejected by the navy because of an enlarged heart muscle but managed to enter service with the Army Air Corps. After enduring and succeeding in a grueling series of flight training camps and schools throughout the country, he was sent to the B-17 Bomber Transition School in Columbus, Ohio, and was informed he was in line to be a first pilot on a B-29 and bomb Japan. By the time he accrued the 250 hours required for the mission, the Japanese had surrendered.
He returned home to Montana, but finding no work to utilize his art training, he moved back to Los Angeles where he found work with an advertising agency. Knudsen went on to become a nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist, first with the weekly Catholic newspaper Tidings, and later with the San Diego Tribune. A member of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists since the 1960s, he was selected four times for inclusion in Pelican's Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year series.
Knudsen has won twenty-three national awards from Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, “America's School for Citizenship Education,” and he is a member of his local chapter of Silver Wings Fraternity, a group of pilots who have soloed over twenty-five years.
In 1973, Knudsen and his wife received Papal Orders and were named Knight and Dame Grand Cross. They have eight children and twelve grandchildren, and in 2007, celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary. They live in San Diego, California.
Craig Kodera is a retired commercial pilot and professional artist. His ability to combine his talents in art with his interests in aviation have earned him the R.G. Smith Award for excellence in Naval Aviation Art for 2001, and the “Best of the Best” award from Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine for the year 2000.
Some of Kodera's clients include McDonell Douglas Corporation, Federal Express, Airbus North America, and the San Diego Aerospace Museum. In A Dream of Pilots, Kodera brings his talents to a children's book for the first time.
Kodera has a bachelor's degree from University of California, Los Angeles and served in the Air Force Reserve for eight years. He is also the charter vice president of the American Society of Aviation Artists. He lives in Clermont, Florida.
Renowned baker Luane Kohnke specializes in gluten-free recipes. Her passion for baking began as a child, and by age fifteen she’d begun inventing her own recipes. In 2011, Kohnke opened her own wholesale bakery, Luane’s Cookies, which both served corporate clients and catered events around the country. She has had numerous recipes published in the New York Times dining section and has also been featured as a guest writer in several cooking blogs and publications, where she highlights the use of unusual ingredients in baking.
Kohnke mastered cooking skills at the well-known Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. She went on to earn a bachelor of arts in sociology and political science from Valparaiso University and a PhD in criminal justice from SUNY-Albany. She currently works as the head of analytics for a digital marketing agency. Kohnke enjoys using her free time to create and bake delectable goodies for friends and family from her home in the Bronx, New York.
Chef David Kolotkin was raised in the kitchen. Watching his mother prepare delicious home-cooked meals and bonding with his father while food sizzled and sautéed in the background, Kolotkin gained a strong veneration and respect for the culinary arts. His passion ran deep, so he decided to pursue a life dedicated to preparing gastronomical delicacies for others. His creativity and inventive style in the kitchen have garnered him worldwide renown. Armed with his three favorite tools—chef’s knife, sauté pan, and his hands—he creates tantalizing dishes such as dry-rubbed, double-cut veal chops with sweet potato soufflé and brined steak with fennel purée and apricot-raisin compote.
Working his way from the line into the upper epicurean echelons, Kolotkin apprenticed at the 21 Club. There, he met Chef Michael Lomonaco, who was so impressed with Kolotkin’s skills that he became his mentor and lifelong friend. Following his apprenticeship, Kolotkin was offered a position with the restaurant. Jobs with other notable fine-dining establishments soon followed, including Butterfield 81, Aretsky’s Patroon, and Windows on the World. Famed as a place where “kosher beckons the cool crowd,” the Prime Grill in New York City enlisted him as their executive chef. A well-experienced and innovative cook, he brought international recognition to the restaurant. Kolotkin is the executive chef at both the Prime Grill and Solo.
Kolotkin graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, where he was voted Most Likely to Succeed. When not mastering the Zen of cooking in the kitchen, he enjoys skydiving, water skiing, snow skiing, and hiking with his wife in New York City, New York.
Born in Cherokee County, Texas, Pamela McConathy Kopfler moved across the country with her doodlebugger father, visiting every state except for Alaska, Hawaii, and the Dakotas. Before finishing the eighth grade, she had attended twelve schools from north to south and east to west.
After completing high school in Slidell, Louisiana, Kopfler attended Louisiana Tech University, where she graduated with a bachelor of science degree in home economics and a teaching certificate. She put that certificate to good use for the next twelve years, working with the Richland Parish School Board and the Monroe City School System, both in Louisiana.
With over a decade of teaching under her belt, Kopfler made a bold life decision. She left the safety of teaching and entered the world of the entrepreneur, launching Creative Works by Pam McConathy. This small business provided marketable merchandise, advertising copy, and television production. She created, wrote for, and appeared in KNOE-TV 8's Pam McConathy's Home and Garden segments, aired four times a week, and her writing has been featured in Louisiana Gardener.
In-Laws, Outlaws, Friends, and Foes: A Southern Collection focuses on the small moments in life that make relationships worthwhile. From stubborn teenagers to the quest for beauty and perfection, Kopfler covers the experiences of everyday life with a conversational style and down-to-earth wit that crosses both genders and generations in its appeal. This collection of anecdotes offers universal reflections on motherhood, friendship, and family, all with a Southern flair. The author frequently shares these humorous stories on public radio.
Kopfler currently resides in Houma, Louisiana, with her husband and two children, who are featured prominently in her writings.
Helen Kowtaluk is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University. There she received her bachelor's in home economics. Since then she has had over twenty years of experience in consumer service and has worked as a consumer-science representative for a utility company.
Ms. Kowtaluk has also been a magazine writer and editor, a textbook editor, has worked in the field of public relations for nutrition, and written and produced Put Nutrition to Work, a series of educational filmstrips. She is the author of three food and nutrition textbooks: Food for Today, Discovering Food, and Discovering Nutrition. The textbooks are very successful and are used in many curriculums around the United States.
The Cook's Problem Solver, is the culmination of her many years of experience with food and editorial work. This basic cookbook solves many common cooking problems, and is an easy reference for basic cooking techniques.
As an elementary school librarian, Susie Kralovansky pursues her passion for both children and books. In addition to writing several articles in children’s magazines, she has written for young readers six nonfiction books about using library resources. She received a Master’s Degree in Education and Library Sciences from Indiana University and is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers, Texas Library Association and International Reading Association. She lives in Cedar Park, Texas, with her husband and son.
“The
simplicity of this story is the essence of its magic. Like Maria herself, Elsie
Kreischer has taken a handful of earth and created something lovely with it.” —Lois
Duncan
—Jeanne Whitehouse
It is often our closest friends who know us the best. Elsie Karr Kreischer takes on the task of writing her personal friend's inspiring biography in María Montoya Martínez: Master Potter. When she was a little girl, nobody expected Martínez to rise above her life-threatening illness. However, she overcame obstacles and adversity to eventually become the most outstanding Indian artist of all time. The artist's pilgrimage toIn
Martínez's journey toward humility, hard work, and perfection, Kreischer
recognizes her exceptional skill and fortune. Best known for the stunning black
pottery she and her husband designed, Martínez's work is represented in some
of the finest galleries across the country.
Kreischer, a resident of
Cynthia Kremsner has been illustrating and writing since she was young girl. In order to improve her skills and to gain professional confidence, she worked with the immensely talented Salina Yoon and Cyndi Marko. She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and is the illustrator coordinator for the Nevada region.
Kremsner studied graphic arts and drama at Santa Rosa Junior College and has illustrated several unpublished children’s books. She was selected as a mentee by Laurent Linn, art director at Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, in the 2009 mentor program and received a Jackpot Grant from the Nevada Arts Council.
In a house filled with animals, family, and music, Kremsner feels right at home. Her husband and two children are avid musicians, and two basset hounds, one lab mix, one cockatiel, and one large lizard round out the orchestra. Kremsner lives with her family in Sparks, Nevada.
The daughter of a U.S. Immigrations Officer father and a registered nurse/model/television personality mother, Virginia Kroll grew up in West Seneca, New York.
The inspiration for her new picture book came when the author was driving home from a rural church service and saw a yellow plastic bowl blowing across a newly harvested field. Wondering where it came from and why it was there, she began imagining the adventures it might take. The story came together in her mind naturally.
Virginia Kroll is a prolific writer with over sixty books published since 1992 and 1,750 published magazine items. A full-time author and speaker as well as a writing instructor with the Institute of Children's Literature, her books range in subject from African folktales to universals, such as siblings and heroes. She is a former teacher with six kids of her own and two granddaughters.
Kroll's book publications have received numerous awards, including a Jane Addams Peace Association commendation; a 1996 listing on the New York Charlotte Award Masterlist; a 1995 KIND Book of the Year Award (Humane Society of the United States); the 1996 Skipping Stones Multicultural Book Award in Best Picture Book; the 1996 Outstanding Trade Book in the Field of Science; three Benjamin Franklin Awards; the 2004 Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year; and the International Reading Association/Children's Book Council 2004 Children's Choice Award.
Virginia Kroll has worked as a nurse aide, recreations supervisor, art teacher, and a crafts teacher. She teaches religion at SS Peter & Paul Church, collects stickers, and is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Retired Teachers and Librarians Association, and the Executive Women of America. A dedicated animal lover, she and her family share their home in Hamburg, New York, just south of Buffalo, with more than forty animals, including tortoises, rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, degus, budgies, and a hedgehog.
Joe Kulka has been working professionally as a freelance illustrator since he graduated from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1987 with a BFA in illustration. His scope as an illustrator covers a variety of styles and genres. He has worked for medical publisher W.B. Saunders (now Elsevier) as an illustrator for medical textbooks, and working as part of a team at Magnet Interactive Studios, he helped develop one of the first U.S. made games for Sony PlayStation®.
In 2000, Kulka began illustrating picture books, and in 2004, he illustrated Woody's ABCs, by Roberta Burzynski, for the U.S. Forest Service, which has since been incorporated into the Head Start program. He is the author and illustrator of the award-winning children's book, Wolf's Coming!, which was chosen by School Library Journal as one of the best books of 2007, received the 2007 Society of School Librarians International Honor Book Award in the Language Arts Picture Book category, and was awarded a bronze medal in the Picture Book 4-8 year-old category of the Moonbeam Children's Book Awards.
An avid fly fisherman, Kulka can occasionally be found trading in his pen and paper for a fly rod. He lives in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, with his wife and children.
As Cambodian refugees, Vuthy Kuon, pronounced “wood-TEE kwan,” and his family quickly learned to appreciate what little they had. Growing up in poverty made him and his siblings strive hard to succeed in order to help their parents.
Heralded as “one of the best speakers we've ever had,” by planners and audiences alike, Vuthy Kuon has been captivating spectators young and old, using motivational stories, humor, and art. His unique style infuses public speaking with energy and drama. He adds his own personal story of a Cambodian refugee coming to America with nothing to becoming CEO of his own successful publishing company, Providence Publishing, to his speeches.
Kuon has been featured on NBC, ABC, CBS, and FOX television promoting his work as an author, illustrator, and public speaker. He has spoken at hundreds of schools and conferences, entertaining hundreds and thousands of children and adults across the nation. His accomplishments also include the publication of over sixteen books, being an award-winning photographer, and a current professional member of NSA.
Inspired at the Rhode Island School of Design, Kuon is now most recognized for his work in children's books. However, his talents have also been showcased as a cartoonist, designer, and photographer. He resides in Houston, Texas, and enjoys spending his time creating and inspiring people with his stories and art. For more information, go to www.vuthykuon.com.