Metropolitan Community College - Kansas City

Authors in Attendance

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
William Trowbridge
Missouri Poet Laureate

William Trowbridge holds a Bachelor's in Arts in Philosophy, an Master's in Arts in English from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. In April 2012, he was appointed to a two-year term as Poet Laureate of Missouri. His poetry publications include five full collections: Ship of Fool (Red Hen Press, 2011), The Complete Book of Kong (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2003), Flickers, O Paradise, and Enter Dark Stranger (University of Arkansas Press, 2000, 1995, 1989). He has also written three chapter books, The Packing House Cantata (Camber Press, 2006), The Four Seasons (Red Dragonfly Press, 2001) and The Book of Kong (Iowa State University Press, l986).

His poems have appeared in more than 30 anthologies and textbooks, as well as in such periodicals as Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, The Georgia Review, Boulevard, The Southern Review, Columbia, Colorado Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Epoch, and New Letters. He has given readings and workshops at schools, colleges, bookstores, and literary conferences throughout the United States.

His awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Pushcart Prize, a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference scholarship, a Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award, and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, Yaddo, and The Anderson Center. He is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Northwest Missouri State University, where he was an editor of The Laurel Review/GreenTower Press from 1986 to 2004. Now living in Lee's Summit, Mo., he teaches in the University of Nebraska low-residency MFA in writing program.

FEATURED AUTHORS:

Joe Baric: Joe Baric works for IBM as a programmer, technical writer and trainer by day. By night, well, let's just say his mind travels to dark places. Extensively read in the horror genre, Joe writes science fiction, horror, and songs. Really, he does write the songs.

M.C. Chambers: M.C. Chambers writes science fiction and fantasy. Her fantasy story Silk and Velvet has just come out in the Hadley Rille Books anthology Renaissance Festival Tales. Her science fiction story Visual Silence won the 2008 Grand Prize in the Return to Luna story contest sponsored by the National Space Society and Hadley Rille Books. Other awards include an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest and a second place in the Heartland Writers' Guild New Writers Competition. She is a member of the NobleFusion writers' group since 1998.

Lewis Diuguid (Saturday Only): Lewis Diuguid joined the staff of The Kansas City Star-Times in May 1977 after graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism. He is the author of an upcoming book, Discovering the Read America: Toward a More Perfect Union, and the 2004 award-winning book, A Teacher's Cry: Expose the Truth About Education Today. A Teacher's Cry is rooted in his studies with the Class of 1999 from the students' freshman year until graduation at Washington High School in Kansas City, Kan. He wrote about 100 columns for The Star chronicling what it's like to be a teenager and teacher today.

Orrin Grey (Saturday Only): Orrin Grey writes short stories of the macabre, occult, and supernatural that have appeared in anthologies like Bound for Evil, Delicate Toxins, Historical Lovecraft, and Candle in the Attic Window, among others. His first collection, Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings, is due out in spring from Evileye Books. He was born on the night before Halloween, and he's been in love with monsters and ghosts ever since. He lives in Olathe with his wife and two cats. You can find out more on his website at www.orringrey.com, where he mostly talks about ghost stories, comic books, and old horror movies.

Laura Hardenbrook: LAURA HARDENBROOK currently teaches composition at Metropolitan Community College. She also works as technical writer and trainer for Fred Pyror Seminars and CareerTrack, but her true love is diagramming a sentence or explaining the subjunctive. Really, just ask her. She earned a B.A. in English from UMKC, in 1994 and her MA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seaton Hill in 2009. Laura is currently shopping her novel, Rhinestone Vampire and working on several other projects.

Aaron Hollingsworth: Mr. Hollingsworth was born and raised in the Jefferson County Missouri area near St. Louis. His interests include making music, studying martial arts, reading obscure and out-dated reference books, and playing games that do not involve electricity. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri with his wife and two sons.

Lindsey Martin-Bowen: A Kansas City native, Lindsey Martin-Bowen teaches prose and fiction writing, literature and cultural studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where she also serves as Writing Assessment Coordinator. She holds an M.A. in English (creative writing emphasis) and a Juris Doctor. In 2008, Woodley Press (Washburn University) released Standing on the Edge of the World, a full-length collection of her poetry. The Gulf Times and The Kansas City Star named the collection one of the Top 10 (Most Noteworthy) poetry books for 2008, and LoHud.com listed it as one the "Best Books" (in the top 10 for poetry) in 2008. Last summer, Paladin Contemporaries published her novel, Hamburger Haven, available at Prospero's Books and at Amazon.com. Her novella Cicada Grove came out in 1992 (Paladin Contemporaries). Her poetry has appeared in New Letters, Rockhurst Review, Bare Root Review, Coal City Review, River King, Thorny Locust, Flint Hills Review, I-70 Review, The Same, Black Bear Review, Kansas City Voices, Lip Service, and other literary magazines and anthologies, and is forthcoming in Little Balkans Review. For two years, she helped Carl Rhoden coordinate the Borders Second Sunday Poetry Series.

Steven Francis Murphy: Steve Murphy's story "Tearing Down Tuesday" was published in Interzone Magazine Issue 210. It placed fourth in the annual reader's poll, was nominated for the BSFA Short Story Award (long list, not final) and received an Honorable Mention in Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction 25th Edition. It is slated for republication with Apex Digest Online later this year. Apex also published "The Limb Knitter." Go to http://www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online/2008/09/short-fiction-the-limb-knitter/. Steve also states the he is "also the historical and military research consultant to Australian writer John Birmingham. He is most notable in science fiction and alternate history circles for his Axis of Time Trilogy. "I provided research for Final Impact, his third novel in the series and I provided research and advice for his next novel which is unrelated to the AoT trilogy, Without Warning. Further, I am slated to provide research for this follow on novel, After America." Steve was also editor of Shorelines for 2007 and received the Longview Crystal M. Fields Award for Excellence in Student Writing.

Torino Porter: Toriano Porter, a business/education reporter at the Lee's Summit Journal newspaper, is the author of The Pride of Park Avenue and the novel James Cool. He is a former all-conference football player at the University of Central Missouri where he studied journalism and creative writing.
Carl Rhoden: Carl Rhoden was born and raised in Kansas City. He holds an MA and MFA and served as the Associate Editor of the Colorado Review for two years. He has taught literature and composition at Western State College and Colorado State University and has studied with the poets David Ray and Charles Simic, to name a few. For four years, he coordinated the Borders Second Sunday Poetry Series in Overland Park. He has published poems in literary journals since the mid-1970s, and in 1988, he won the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Press Association Award for Poetry. His poetry has appeared in Rockhurst Review, Kansas City Star, Coal City Review, Review, Thorny Locust, The Same, and I-70 Review.

Diane (D.L.) Rogers: Diane Rogers is the author of THE WHITE OAKS SERIES, a six-book historical fiction series that begins in 1855 on the Oregon Trail and goes through 1890 and the Massacre at Wounded Knee, with everything you can think of in between. Diane's stories are those of survival, acceptance, and making a difference in those difficult years. The first book in the series, TOMORROW'S PROMISE: Survival on the Plains, was a 2009 finalist in the Epic (Ebook) Awards and AMY, the fifth book in the series, was recently among the top 20 finalists selected for the prestigious THORPE MENN Award, given by the Kansas City Library in conjunction with The American Association of University Women-KC Branch. Diane is currently working on her newest addition to THE WHITE OAKS SERIES, which begins in 1821 as Missouri becomes the 24th state in the United States.

Susan Satterfield: Susan Satterfield is the author of a number of published short stories including "Mirror of His Soul" and "The Changing," both appearing in Eldritch Tales, and "A Perfect World," appearing in the Yard Dog Press anthology, Stories That Won't Make Your Parents Hurl, in November of 2000. Her chapbook, Mirror Images, was published by Yard Dog Press in May of 2002. "The Lady Killer" and "Sweet Teddy" appeared in an anthology entitled Small Bites in September 2004. She is also the author of "A Bubba Poet" found in The International House of Bubbas and "What Goes Around" from the anthology Flush Fiction, and "Close Encounters of the Bubba Kind," in the anthology, Houston, We've Got Bubbas. Her latest work, a zombie poem entitled "The Hunger," is now available in the new anthology, Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes. Susan is an English Instructor at MCC Longview.

(Spencer Wendleton) Alan Spencer is the author of "The Body Cartel" (Damnation Books) and "Inside the Perimeter: Scavengers of the Dead" (Living Dead Press). Look for his work in many horror anthologies, including, "Love is Dead," "The Book of Cannibals," and "Book of the Dead 2," to a name a few. This fall, his latest short fiction will appear in the anthology "Toe Tags 2."

Marti Verlander: The first woman accepted as the personal student of the Taika, Seiyu Oyata, Marti Verlander taught Ryu-Te® Karate for 18 years, including eight in her own dojo. She earned a 5th-degree black belt and membership in the elite Oyata Shin Shu Ho Ryu organization. For fourteen years, she was the editor, publisher, and primary writer for the Ryu-Te® Karate organization's international newsletter. Mr. Oyata gave her special training in a small weapon called chisaikunbo, which she taught on his behalf at his annual summer and fall conferences. Her articles on martial arts topics have appeared in Consumer's Digest, Kansas City Magazine, Inside Karate, and American Karate. Marti has worked as a corporate training specialist and taught such classes as Total Quality Leadership, Creative Problem-Solving, and Peak Performance in Presentations, as well as First Aid and CPR. Her short stories have appeared in Flashquake, e-clips, and Alienskin Magazine. Her novel, Legend of the Black Diamond, placed 3rd in SF/F/H category of the 2010 PPWC Paul Gillette Award. She can be found online at www.marthagilstrap.com.

Confirmed Groups Attending:

The Dead Horse Society: The Dead Horse Society is a group of speculative fiction writers (science-fiction, fantasy, horror, and their many sub-genres) who live and meet in the Kansas City area...Missouri and Kansas. Website: http://www.meetup.com/KC-SpecFic-Writers/

The Kansas City Writers Meetup: Our group is dedicated to helping writers of all skill levels achieve their full potential. We welcome writers in all genres and believe diversity of perception and expression adds to our strength. We have monthly meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month at Border's, 119th and Metcalf, at 7:00pm. We typically have speakers at these monthly meetings, who share their expertise in writing, editing, story and character development, dialogue, agents and publishing, and other areas relevant to the writer's life. You can check our website for the topic: http://www.meetup.com/writers-488/ We also have four weekly critique groups. For more information about The Kansas City Writers Meetup Group, visit us at: http://www.meetup.com/writers-488/ Contacts: Tim Anderson, timtsa@aol.com, 913-484-9823, or Helen Stevermer, hstevermer@kc.rr.com.

Missouri Center for the Book: The Missouri Center for the Book was established in 1993 "to bring the words and ideas of books into the thoughts and lives of Missourians." It is the only statewide organization that promotes the importance of books and reading to Missouri residents, celebrates the state's literary heritage, and recognizes the contributions of Missouri's authors, book illustrators, booksellers, publishers, librarians, and others involved in the literary arts. The Missouri Center is an affiliate of the national Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, which was established by law in 1977 to strengthen and celebrate the vital role of books, reading, and libraries in the cultural life of the nation. Headquartered at the Missouri State Library in Jefferson City, the Center is governed by a board of directors composed of authors, publishers, librarians, editors, and community leaders. The board develops programs and plans activities that stimulate public interest in books and reading.

New Letters: The academic magazine is considered by many to contain "virtually the who's who of international writers" (Magazines for Libraries). This literary journal is published by the University of Missouri Kansas City. This magazine of writing and art is a quarterly publication that seeks the best new contemporary writing, whether from established writers or from those just ready to be discovered. New Letters sponsors the annual New Letters Literary Awards: The $1,500 New Letters Prize for Poetry (for the best group of three to six poems) The $1,500 Dorothy Churchill Cappon Prize for the Essay (for the best essay) The $1,500 Alexander Patterson Cappon Prize for Fiction (for the best short story) Deadline for all genres: May 18th of each year. Stop by their table in the Education Center and learn more about this award-winning magazine.
http://www.newletters.org/default.asp

Summit Scribes – Writers Group (Lee's Summit, Missouri) The Summit Scribes is a writers group for all ages and for all types of writers. The meetings are held in Lee's Summit, a SE suburb of Kansas City, MO. Meeting attendance is typically 12 to 15. Annual dues are $24. The monthly meetings include a writing exercise, then writers read from what they have written or from an ongoing work and those present comment about the work. Three or four times a year, the program is a published author who speaks about their work and how they write and get published. Between monthly meetings, all members (nearly 100) receive several emails containing writing related information.
http://www.writermag.com/wrt/community/groups/group-info.asp?groupid=110

Unity Village Writers' Group: This group is based at Unity Village, and is a gathering of writers from various genres.