Speakers' Bureau: Hear your
local writers!
Speakers' Bureau: Hear your
local writers!
Speakers selected to represent the Knoxville Writers Guild are not paid by the Guild, but have agreed to donate 10% of all honoraria, compensation and book sales to the KWG. Neither the Bureau nor the Guild acts as an intermediary or agent in recommending individual speakers. Each speaker is listed with photo, brief bio, and categories of expertise.
Once you have selected the speaker who best suits your organization's needs and the interests of your members, contact him or her directly using contact information on the Speakers Bureau web site. You and the speaker can then set program content, compensation (if any) and logistical arrangements. Since the Speakers Bureau is a community service of the Knoxville Writers Guild, we are anxious for your feedback. After the program, we invite you to fill out the exit survey, either on at this website or in hard copy provided by the speaker.
Guild members: If you are a current member and would like to be available as a speaker, please send the webmaster a photo and your bio (work experience, publications, honors and categories of your expertise.)
What's your interest? Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Humor, Journalism, Memoirs & Journaling, Professional & Technical Writing, Publishing & Marketing, Regional Writing, Songwriting & Performance Art, Grammar for Grownups, Teaching Writing & the Writing Process, Writing for Young People, K-12 School Programs.
Carole Borges, author of Disciplining
the Devils Country has published poems in Poetry, Kalliope,
Crosscurrents. Her non-fiction credits include Rudder Magazine,
Vegetarian Digest and Review, and Horsemans Journal.
A series of her non-fiction essays was featured in the North Shore Sunday
magazine. As a freelance journalist, her work has been seen in the
Lynn Item, the Dorchester Community News,
the West Side Gazette, and the Enlightener
newspaper in Knoxville.
Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Carole was also the recipient of Massachusetts Artists Foundation award. Her unique Writing Your Family Memories and Elements of Fiction workshops have been presented in a variety of settings. She has been a presenter at the East Coast Writing Conference and the Florida Scholastic Press Associations Workshop for High School Seniors. Carole is currently available as a reader, speaker or workshop leader. She has experience working with small and large groups and writers at all levels.
Categories: Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Writing for Young People, Teaching Writing, K-12 School Programs, Memoirs & Journaling, Journalism, The Writing Process, Publishing & Marketing. E-mail: caroleann1@yahoo.com
* * *
Judy DiGregorio currently resides in Oak
Ridge, Tennessee. She is the humor columnist for Anderson County Visions
Magazine, but her work also appears in New Millennium
Writings, Ridges Magazine, Eva Mag and CityView Magazine.
Judy has published close to 300 essays and humorous poems in regional and national
publications such as The Writer, Army/Navy Times,
and ByLine Magazine. She also has three stories in
Chicken Soup books.
In addition to her writing, Judy is a sought after presenter and speaker who has given workshops for the Appalachian Writers” Association, the Alabama Writers’ Conclave, the Knoxville Writers’ Group, the Tennessee Mountain Writers, and the University of Tennessee Non-credit Programs. The Tennessee Arts Commission nominated her to their online artist registry, Southern.Artistry.com, in 2006, and the Oak Ridge Observer named Judy Best Local Writer in 2007.
Celtic Cat Publishing, Knoxville, will publish Life Among the Lilliputians, a collection of Judy’s humorous essays in late 2008. Visit Judy’s website and blog at www.jabberjudy.com
Categories: Nonfiction, The Writing
Process, Humor, Publishing and Marketing Your Writing, K-12 School Programs
(in Oak Ridge TN only).
E-mail:
jdig60@gmail.com
* * *
Doris
Gove has written
six books for children and three hiking guides. Her most recent book, The
Smokies Yukky Book: Weird, Creepy, and Completely Gross Stuff That Really, Really
Happens Here is written for 3rd-5th-graders and is biologically accurate
while being satisfyingly disgusting.
She has also written a gentler
book on tree identification for early elementary students, biographies of a
snake and a salamander, and a book about collecting animals to observe them
and then returning them to their homes.
Her school programs can be fitted into current class curriculum, and she often
brings examples of subjects of her books.
Categories: Nonfiction, Writing for Young People, K-12 School Programs. E-mail: DorisGove@aol.com
* * *
Timothy
D. Holder is
the author of Ask the Professor: Advice for College Grads,
which offers humorous yet practical advice. He has also had seven other books
published, including Influential Christians, which looks at the lives of 16
current Christian leaders.
Holder is an Associate Professor of History for Walters State and based at the Sevier County Campus. His wife, Angela Easterday Holder, is an Associate Professor of Music at Carson-Newman College. They live in Knoxville.
Besides offering unsolicited advice to students and talking about Christians, Holder’s interests include the US Presidents (he’s written a book called Nixon and His Men), public speaking (he’s appeared before everyone from middle schoolers to senior adults), and harmonica playing (on rare occasions). Website: http://tdhcommunications.com
Categories: Nonfiction, Writing for Young People, K-12 School Programs E-mail: tdholder4@aol.com
* * *
Jim Johnston is interested in and has spoken
on Exile: Poems of an Irish Immigrant, his first
collection of poems, self-published in 1997. The collection explores the reasons
for leaving Ireland in 1974 and his experience of leaving home. Jim is an accomplished
reader of the works of other Irish poets and has spoken about writing to both
high school and junior college creative writing classes.
He is the owner of Celtic Cat Publishing, a small independent Knoxville publishing company. "I have spoken on various aspects of publishing, particularly self-publishing. Celtic Cat Publishing was founded in 1995 and has published nine books including works by Jeff Daniel Marion, Marilyn Kallet, Arthur Stewart, Frank Jamison and Angie Vicars."
"With over 44 million U.S. residents tracing their ancestry back to Ireland, I am periodically asked to speak on various aspects of Irish history and culture. I have spoken on Northern Ireland, particularly on the period known as the Troubles; on the development of modern Ireland; and on Saint Patrick."
Categories: Poetry, Publishing, Ireland. E-mail: celtic01@comcast.net
* * *
Marilyn
Kallet is the
author of 12 books, including Circe, After Hours and The
Art of College Teaching: 28 Takes, co-edited with April Morgan, UT
Press, both in 2005. Kallet
is the poetry editor for New Millennium Writings and is a professor
in the English Department of UT, where she has taught for 25 years.
The Knoxville YWCA named her Outstanding Woman in the Arts in 2002, and she was inducted into the East Tennessee Literary Hall of Fame in Poetry in 2005. Dr. Kallet received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in Rutgers, and the Diplome Superieure from the Sorbonne.
Categories: Poetry, Songwriting & Performance Art, K-12 School Programs. E-mail: kallet@utk.edu
* * *
Kali Meister has worked for two decades as
an actress, performer, and writer. Her most recent contribution to Knoxville
theater community include five different productions of Eve Ensler's
Vagina Monologues and a multitude of benefit productions for local
charities including Michael Karnes, T-Cells and Sympathy for AIDS Response Knoxville
and Exonerated for Amnesty International.
She performed her play Exposed, a non-fiction journey through her life chronicling her survival through childhood incest, her rape in her early adulthood, and violence, struggles with food addiction, and negative body image for the Knoxville Writers Guild in March of 2006. Exposed won the 2006 Margaret Atley Woodruff Award for Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee. The play will be one of the featured plays for The Actors Co-op's Fringe Festival.
Kali was the recipient of the 2005 and 2006 Margaret Atley Woodruff Award for Creative Writing, the 2005 and 2006 Eleanor Burke Award for non-fiction, and received second place in the Bain-Swigget Award for form poetry in 2006. She has publications in The New Millennium Review, Pegasus Review, Prism, Knoxville Writers' Guild's Body Anthology: Low Explosions, Phoenix, and Circle Magazine.
Categories: Poetry, Non-fiction, Memoirs & Journaling, Humor, Songwriting & Performance Art, Playwriting, The Writing Process, and Writing as a Form of Recovery. E-mail: meisterkali@gmail.com
* * *
Joe Rector writes a weekly column for the Knoxville News Sentinel
and The Focus. His works have also appeared in the Knoxville Writers'
Guild anthology Low Impact, and he has published works in Chicken Soup
for the Mother and Son Soul, Chicken Soup for the New Mother's Soul,
and Chicken Soup for the Menopause Soul. Additionally, his works
have appeared in Knoxville Magazine and Grandparent Magazine.
After a thirty year career of teaching English in high school, Rector works with his new web site, Teacher Tales, where classroom teachers share their stories, as well as continuing as a freelance writer.
Web sites: www.teachertales.net and www.thecommonisspectacular.com
Categories: Teaching Writing in K-12, Memoirs & Journaling, Grammar for Grownups, Journalism, Editing, Regional Writing. E-mail: joerector@comcast.net
* * *
Pamela
Schoenewaldt lives in Knoxville, TN, where she was Writer in
Residence at the University of Tennessee Hodges Library and taught creative
and professional writing at UT. She is now a staff writer at FMB Advertising
and also has non-profit clients for grant and promotional writing. She has a
long list of corporate and non-profit clients for print and non-print projects.
Her short stories have been published in the U.S,, France and Italy and she
has won the Chekhov Prize for Short Fiction, the Leslie Garrett, Tennessee Writers
Association, Writers Place, Cascando Travel Writing and Literary Latte' awards.
Her one-act play in Italian, “Espresso con Mia Madre,” (Espresso
with My Mother) was produced at Teatro Cilea, Naples. Pamela's historical novel
of the immigration experience, When We Were Strangers,
will be published by HarperCollins in early 2011.
Besides teaching creative writing to school and community audiences, Pamela has an extensive list of corporate and non-profit clients for print, video, speech and grant-writing, and editing. She provides engaging, informative lunch & learn, dinner talks, workshops and seminars for corporate, community and professional audiences.
Categories: Fiction, Teaching Writing, K-12 School Programs, Grammar for Grownups, Writing as a career, Business and Professional & Technical writing. E-mail: p.schoene@comcast.net
* * *
Art
Stewart is an
ecologist, science educator, essayist and poet.He has authored or coauthored
more than 80 articles in technical journals, and authored three highly regarded
books of essays and poems (Rough Ascension and Other Poems of Science
and Bushido: The Virtues of Rei and Makoto; and Circle,
Turtle, Ashes) in addition to individual essays and poems published
in various literary journals.
He has given presentations as an invited speaker on technical topics, and presentations on the use of poetry to promote science education; he has also given poetry readings at universities, K12 schools and various local civic groups, and given presentations blending poetry and science to various technical and science-education societies. Art Stewart is a Tennessee Poetry Prize winner, a Wilma Dykeman essay winner, has taught at the university and high school levels, and has been described as a "good hearted provocateur within the culture of science."
Categories: Poetry readings, Technical writing, The poetry of science, The science of poetry, and The analysis of Ceriodaphnia toxicity test results. E-mail: zcatfish12@charter.net
* * *
Laura
Still, author of Guardians and Acts
of the Apostles, Vol. I, is a contributing poetry editor for New
Millennium Writings and free-lance writer and editor, with experience
in areas as diverse as poetry and ghost writing. In addition to her books and
New Millennium, recent publications include Outscapes
and Cityview Magazine. She has taught Sunday School
for 19 years, leading and producing the children's drama workshop for the last
nine. She is also a trained labyrinth guide and has served as a lay leader in
this ministry since 2001. Laura has worked as a stage manager and performer
with the Tennessee Stage Company and taught poetry and creative writing workshops
in schools for middle and high school students as well as adult workshops through
the Knoxville Writers' Guild and various writing conferences. She was a featured
panelist at the 2010 Southern Festival of Books and is available
as a performer, speaker, and workshop leader for groups of all sizes.
Categories: Poetry, Drama, Journaling, Dream Poetry, Labyrinth Walking, Writing on Faith. A list of available book talks and workshops can be found at www.LauraStill.net or www.Rotationplays.com.
Email: eunicehat@att.net or click the contact link at either web site.
* * *
Pam Strickland is a widely published essayist and
journalist for both regional and national publications writing on politics,
social justice, religion, health and family. The high school yearbook she advised
was nationally recognized. Currently adjunct teaching at Roane State Community
College, while freelance writing, she is co- author of the upper elementary
fiction book, Under One Flag: A Year at Rohwer by August House
Publishing, which is a 2006 Historic Preservation Book Prize nominee. She has
also done editing for August House and others.
Categories: Nonfiction, Memoirs & Journaling, Journalism, Regional, Teaching Writing & the Writing Process, K-12 School Programs. E-mail: pamstrickland@mac.com
* * *
Ed
Sullivan is
the author of many publications, including three books: The Holocaust
in Literature for Youth: A Guide and Resource Book, Reaching Reluctant Young
Adult Readers: A Handbook for Librarians and Teachers;
and The Ultimate Weapon: The Race to Develop the Atomic Bomb,
a nonfiction book for young people. Ed has a B.A. and M.A. in English, and M.S.
in Library Science. Ed has taught high school English, and at three universities.
Ed has extensive experience
speaking to audiences of all ages on a variety of subjects.
Categories: Nonfiction, Teaching Writing, K-12 School Programs, Writing for Young People. To learn more about Ed and his work, visit http://www.sully-writer.com.
* * *
Marianne Worthington is on the faculty at University
of the Cumberlands and the Kentucky Governors School for the Arts. Her poems
have appeared in Shenandoah, Kalliope, The Louisville Review, Kaleidoscope,
Natural Bridge, Wind, and other literary magazines. Her recently published
poetry chapbook is entitled Larger Bodies Than Mine.
She won the Sue Ellen Hudson Excellence In Writing Award in 2003 and was a 2005
finalist in the Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Contest. Mariannes reviews, essays,
and other non-fiction have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Appalachian
Journal, Journal of Appalachian Studies, Mossy Creek Reader, and Journal
of Kentucky Studies, Louisville Magazine, Now & Then, and
Arts Across Kentucky, Wind. Her prose and poetry are widely anthologized.
She has presented workshops and lectures for the Knoxville Writers Guild, Alabama Writers Conclave, New Opportunity School for Women, Montessori Schools in Knoxville, Kentucky Governors School for the Arts, Laurel County (KY) Public Library, Bellarmine University, Lincoln Memorial University, and Eastern Kentucky University. In Kentucky, she lives with her husband and two fabulously lazy dogs.
Categories: Poetry, Nonfiction, Journalism, Regional, K-12 School Programs. E-mail: marianneworthington@hotmail.com
Updated April 17, 2011
WEB DISCLAIMER: The Knoxville Writers Guild (KWGT) confirms that the information on this website provides good faith statements of the speaker's qualifications. It is the responsibility of the client to determine the suitability of a speaker for their needs. Opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily represent those of the Guild. Clients who use the KWG Speakers' Bureau services agree that the Guild will not be held responsible for personal or physical harm or losses financial or otherwise that may occur as a result of engagement of the speakers.