Booksontape.com : Featured Readers

Featured Readers

We are privileged to represent some of the finest narrators in the industry. Please enjoy the following bios of some of our most popular readers. Also take a look at our authors.

		Philip Pullman (Amer.) “Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all.”—Philip Pullman Philip Pullman is the acclaimed author of the His Dark Materials trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. His other books for children and young adults include Count Karlstein and a trilogy of Victorian thrillers featuring Sally Lockhart. The Golden Compass, the first of Pullman's His Dark Materials triology, won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Fiction Prize. ABOUT THE AUTHOR I started telling stories as soon as I knew what stories were. I was fascinated by them: that something could happen and be connected to another thing, and that someone could put the two things together and show how the first thing caused the second thing, which then caused a third thing. I loved it. I love it still. I grew up at a time when TV wasn’t as important as it is now. In fact, part of my childhood was spent in Australia at a time when that country didn’t even have TV so a lot of my early experiences with stories came from the radio, which is a wonderful medium. I remember listening to gangster serials, and cowboy serials, and best of all: “Faster than a speeding bullet—more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s SUPERMAN!” Superman on the radio was exciting enough, but when I first saw a Superman comic, it changed my life. Soon afterward I discovered Batman, too, whom I loved even more. I had to argue with my parents about them, though, because they weren’t “proper” reading. I suppose what persuaded them to let me carry on reading comics was the fact that I was also reading books just as greedily, and that I was good at spelling; so obviously the comics weren’t harming me too much. My favorite stories for a long time were ghost stories. I used to enjoy frightening myself and my friends with the tales I read, and making up stories about a tree in the woods we used to call the Hanging Tree, creeping past it in the dark and shivering as we looked at the bare, sinister outline against the sky. I still enjoy ghost stories, even though I don’t think I believe in ghosts anymore. I was sure that I was going to write stories myself when I grew up. It’s important to put it like that: not “I am a writer,” but rather “I write stories.” If you put the emphasis on yourself rather than your work, you’re in danger of thinking that you’re the most important thing. But you’re not. The story is what matters, and you’re only the servant, and your job is to get it out on time and in good order. The most valuable thing I’ve learned about writing is to keep going, even when it’s not coming easily. You sometimes hear people talk about something called “writer’s block.” Did you ever hear a plumber talk about plumber’s block? Do doctors get doctor’s block? Of course they don’t. They work even when they don’t want to. There are times when writing is very hard, too, when you can’t think what to put next, and when staring at the empty page is miserable toil. Tough. Your job is to sit there and make things up, so do it. As well as keeping going, there are many other things I’ve learned about this craft, and some of them came to me when I was teaching. What I enjoyed most in that difficult and valuable profession was telling stories, telling folk tales and ghost stories and Greek myths, over and over, until I knew them as well as I knew my own life. And in doing so, I learned some of the laws of a story. Not rules - rules can be changed. “Smoking Permitted Here” can become “No Smoking” overnight, if people decide smoking is a bad thing. But laws such as the law of gravity can’t be changed: Gravity is there whether we approve of it or not. And so are the laws of a story. A story that is unresolved will not satisfy—that’s a law. If a scene does not advance the story, it will get in the way—that’s another law. You must know exactly where your story begins—that’s a third. And so on. One strange thing about stories is that you sometimes know how long they’re going to be, even before you’ve begun thinking about them. With His Dark Materials, the trilogy of which the first part is The Golden Compass, I knew from the very start—even before I had a main character in mind, and long before I knew what might happen to her—that this story would be 1,200 pages long. That was the size of it. I knew, too, that I was going to enter a world I hadn’t known before: a world of fantasy. Previously, all of my books had been realistic. When I began writing it, I discovered a kind of freedom and excitement I’d never quite felt before. And that is one of the joys of writing: You constantly encounter new experiences. I live in Oxford now, and I do my writing in a shed at the bottom of the garden. If the young boy I used to be could have looked ahead in time and seen the man I am today, writing stories in his shed, would he have been pleased? I wonder. Would that child who loved Batman comics and ghost stories approve of the novels I earn my living with now? I hope so. I hope he’s still with me. I’m writing them for him. PRAISE THE GOLDEN COMPASS —Winner of the Carnegie Medal —An American Booksellers Book of the Year (ABBY) Award Winner “As always, Pullman is a master at combining impeccable characterizations and seamless plotting, maintaining a crackling pace to create scene upon scene of almost unbearable tension. This glittering gem will leave readers of all ages eagerly awaiting the next installment of Lyra’s adventures.”—Starred, Publishers Weekly THE SUBTLE KNIFE —An ALA Best Books for Young Adults “More than fulfilling the promise of The Golden Compass, this second volume starts off at a heart-thumping pace and never slows down. . . . The grandly exuberant storytelling is sure to enthrall.”—Starred, Publishers Weekly “The intricacy of the plot is staggering. . . . There is no doubt that the work is stunningly ambitious, original, and fascinating.”—Starred, The Horn Book Magazine “The character development as well as the relentless pace . . . make this a resoundingly successful sequel. . . . It will leave readers desperate for the next installment.”—Starred, Booklist THE AMBER SPYGLASS —A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age “Pullman has created the last great fantasy masterpiece of the twentieth century.”—The Cincinnati Enquirer “Absorbing. . . . Like Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling, [Pullman] invents a world filled with strange divinations and wordplays.”—Newsweek “A literary masterpiece . . . [that] caps the most magnificent fantasy series since The Lord of the Rings and puts Harry Potter to shame. . . . A page-turning story that builds to a powerful finish.”—Oregonian “Impossible to put down, so firmly and relentlessly does Pullman draw you into his tale. . . . [A] gripping saga pitting the magnetic young Lyra Belacqua and her friend Will Parry against the forces of both Heaven and Hell.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette I WAS A RAT! “Phillip Pullman's tale is fast and clever.”—The New York Times Book Review COUNT KARLSTEIN “In this deliciously gothic thriller there are enough demon huntsmen, evil guardians, and brooding castles to please even the most desensitized reader.”—Starred, School Library Journal “A welcome diversion . . . [that is] dashing, sparkling, and wildly over the top.”—Starred, Publishers Weekly
		Jane Adams (Amer.) Jane Adams makes her exciting debut with THE GREENWAY. She lives in England.
		Noah Adams (Amer.) Noah Adams is a senior correspondent for NPR News. In his current position, he works with NPR's National Desk to cover stories on the working poor across America. He lives with his wife, Neenah Ellis, a freelance journalist, in Takoma Park, Maryland.
		Mitch Albom (Amer.) Mitch Albom writes for the Detroit Free Press, and has been voted America's No. 1 sports columnist ten times by the Associated Press Sports Editors. Albom, a former professional musician, hosts a daily radio show on WJR in Detroit and appears regularly on ESPN's "The Sports Reporters." He is the author of Bo and Fab Five, both national bestsellers, and has also published four collections of his columns. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan.
		Julia Alvarez (Amer.) “Mi casa, su casa. Mi libro, su libro. My house is your house. My book, your book.”—Julia Alvarez Julia Alvarez grew up in the Dominican Republic before emigrating to the United States at the age of 10. She is the award-winning author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, ¡Yo!, and the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, In the Time of the Butterflies. Her books for young readers include Before We Were Free, How Tía Lola Came to (Visit) Stay, and the picture book, The Secret Footprints.
		Daniel G. Amen (Amer.) Daniel G. Amen, M.D., is a clinical neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and brain-imaging expert who heads up the world-renowned Amen Clinics. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and has won numerous writing and research awards. He writes a monthly column in Men’s Health called “Head Check” and has published nineteen books, numerous professional and popular articles, and a number of audio and video programs. His books include Preventing Alzheimer’s, Healing Anxiety and Depression, Healing the Hardware of the Soul, Healing ADD, and the New York Times bestseller Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. He is an internationally renowned keynote speaker and a popular guest expert for the media, with appearances on CNN, the Today show, The View, and other venues.
		Maya Angelou (Amer.) Maya Angelou is an accomplished poet, an award-winning writer, a journalist, an activist, a performer, a dancer, an actress, a director, and a teacher. She is also a three-time Grammy Award winner for her autobiographical spoken-word recordings. Born in St. Louis, she was raised in Stamps, Arkansas, and then went to San Francisco. She lives in Harlem, NY, and Winston-Salem, NC. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she has also written poetry collections, including I Shall Not Be Moved and Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?, and a number of books for young readers, including Kofi and His Magic; My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me; and the Maya's World series.
		Karen Armstrong (Amer.) Karen Armstrong’s first book, the bestselling Through the Narrow Gate, described her seven years as a nun in a Roman Catholic order. She has since published numerous bestselling books, including A History of God, Islam: A Short History, Buddha, The Spiral Staircase and most recently The Great Transformation. She is a freelance writer and she lives in London.
		Tom Bailey (Amer.) Tom Bailey is the author of Crow Man, a collection of short stories, and A Short Story Writer’s Companion, and the editor of On Writing Short Stories. He lives with his wife and three children in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, where he teaches in the creative writing program at Susquehanna University. This is his first novel.
		Lynne Reid Banks (Brit.) Lynne Reid Banks was evacuated to Canada during World War II, and she returned to England in 1945 to study for the stage. She later became a freelance journalist and playwright and in 1955 became the first woman TV news reporter. She has written many books for children, teenagers, and adults including The Indian in the Cupboard adventures.
		Esther Benson (Amer.) Esther Benson brings to this reading a rich background in the performing arts, as well as a natural talent for telling children’s stories.
		Elizabeth Berg (Amer.) Elizabeth Berg is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including Dream When You're Feeling Blue, We Are All Welcome Here, The Year of Pleasures, The Art of Mending, Say When, True to Form, Never Change, and Open House, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for the ABBY Award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, Berg is also the author of a nonfiction work, Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True. She lives in Chicago. To schedule a speaking engagement, please contact American Program Bureau at www.apbspeakers.com
		Judy Blume (Amer.) Judy Blume's twenty-two books, including the New York Times bestsellers Wifey and Smart Women, have sold over sixty-five million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty languages. She spends summers on Martha's Vineyard with her family.
		Tom Bodett (Amer.) Tom Bodett is a storyteller recognized for his warm, humorous style, but he is perhaps best known as the spokesperson for Motel 6. He made his national broadcasting debut in 1984 as a commentator for National Public Radio's All Things Considered; he currently hosts the PBS/Travel Channel co-production Travels on America's Historic Trails with Tom Bodett, which has received two Emmy nominations. His voice can also be heard on Steven Spielberg's Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Saturday Night Live, and National Geographic Explorer. He is the author of five books and has recorded fifteen audiocassettes. He has lived in Alaska for the past twenty-three years.
		Will Bowen (Amer.) WILL BOWEN is the lead minister at Christ Church Unity in Kansas City, MO. Prior to entering the ministry, he spent many years in radio and in sales and marketing. His passions are exercise, Bible history, juggling, horseback riding, traveling, and reading, He and his wife, Gail, have a daughter, Lia. The Bowen family live in rural Missouri with several horses, dogs, and cats.
		Rick Bragg (Amer.) Rick Bragg is the author of two best-selling books, Ava’s Man and All Over but the Shoutin’. He divides his time between New Orleans and his native Alabama. Rick Bragg is represented by the Knopf Speakers Bureau (http://www.knopfspeakersbureau.com).
		Tom Brokaw (Amer.) Tom Brokaw is the author of four bestsellers: The Greatest Generation, The Greatest Generation Speaks, An Album of Memories, and A Long Way from Home. From 1976 to 1981 he anchored Today on NBC. He was the sole anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw from 1983 to 2004.
		Jill Conner Browne (Amer.) Jill Conner Browne is the author of the bestselling The Sweet Potato Queens’ Book of Love, God Save the Sweet Potato Queens, and The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner) She is Boss Queen of the Sweet Potato Queens of Jackson, Mississippi, and now tours and speaks full-time about all things Queenly.
		Tammy Bruce (Amer.) Tammy Bruce has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity & Colmes, Today, The G. Gordon Liddy Show, and The Larry Elder Show, among numerous other television and radio programs, and she has been written about in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Human Events, and elsewhere. A regular columnist for NewsMax.com and FrontPageMagazine.com and a frequent writer for The Advocate, she lives in Los Angeles.
		Bill Bryson (Amer.) Bill Bryson’s bestselling books include A Walk in the Woods, Notes from a Small Island, In a Sunburned Country, Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words, A Short History of Nearly Everything, which earned him the 2004 Aventis Prize, and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Bryson lives in England with his wife and children.
		Ken Burns (Amer.) Ken Burns, producer and director of the film series The War, founded his own documentary company, Florentine Films, in 1976. His films include Jazz, Baseball, and The Civil War, which was the highest-rated series in the history of American public television. His work has won numerous prizes, including the Emmy and Peabody Awards, and two Academy Award nominations. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire.
		Marc Cashman (Amer.) Marc Cashman's voice has been heard locally, regionally, nationally and internationally on Radio, TV, film, documentaries, radio plays, video games and audio books. He has voiced thousands of Radio and TV commercials, dubbed numerous foreign films and created the voices for numerous audio books, plus dozens of online and videogame characters. Marc brings a high level of professionalism, humor, energy and creativity to every voice acting session. His recent recordings include Whale Season by N. M. Kelby, Rule #1 by Phil Town, The Ride of Our Lives by Mike Leonard, and JPod by Douglas Coupland.
		Ana Castillo (Amer.) Ana Castillo is the author of the novels Peel My Love Like an Onioin, So Far from God, The Mixquiahuala Letters, and Sapogonia. She has written a story collection, Loverboys; the crtitical study Massacre of the Dreamers; the poetry collection My Father Was a Toltec and Selected Poems; and the children's book My Daughter, My Son, the Eagle, The Dove. She is the editor of the anthology Goddess of the Americas: Writings on the Virgin of Guadalupe, available from Vintage Espanol (La diosa de las Americas). Castillo has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award, a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Chicago with her son, Marcel.
		Gary Chapman (Amer.) GARY CHAPMAN is an ordained minister and marriage counselor. He is the author of the bestselling The Five Love Languages, which has sold more than 4 million copies and was the first in a popular series of love-language books. The host of a national radio program and a popular conference speaker, he lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
		Ram Charan (Amer.) RAM CHARAN is the coauthor of the bestseller Execution and the author of What the CEO Wants You to Know, Know-How, and many other books. Dr. Charan grew up in India, where he first learned the art and science of business in his family’s shoe shop. After earning his M.B.A. and D.B.A. from Harvard Business School, he taught for a number of years at both Harvard and Northwestern. He now advises the leaders and boards of companies around the world, including GE, DuPont, Nokia, Verizon, and the Thomson Corporation. What people around the world proclaim are Ram’s practicality and the value he provides in helping them solve business problems. For more information on Ram Charan and his work, visit www.ram-charan.com.
		Deepak Chopra (Amer.) DEEPAK CHOPRA is the author of more than fifty books translated into over thirty-five languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers in both the fiction and nonfiction categories. Chopra’s Wellness Radio airs weekly on Sirius Satellite Stars, Channel 102, and focuses on the areas of success, love, sexuality and relationships, well-being, and spirituality. He is founder and president of the Alliance for a New Humanity. www.deepakchopra.com
		Sandra Cisneros (Amer.) Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award and the American Book Award, and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. Cisneros is the author of the novels The House on Mango Street and Caramelo, a collection of short stories Woman Hollering Creek, a book of poetry Loose Woman, and a children's book Hairs/Pelitos. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.
		Esme Raji Codell (Amer.) ESME RAJI CODELL is the author of the acclaimed novel Sahara Special, winner of the IRA Children’s Book Award, a Kirkus Editors’ Choice for 2003, and a BookSense 76 #1 title; as well as a memoir for young readers, Sing a Song of Tuna Fish: Hard-to-Swallow Stories from Fifth Grade. A former teacher, bookseller, and children’s librarian, she lives with her husband and son in Chicago.
		Billy Collins (Amer.) Billy Collins is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Nine Horses, Sailing Alone Around the Room, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. He is also the editor of Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. A distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York, he was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He currently serves as the Poet Laureate of New York State.
		Bruce Coville (Amer.) “My writing works best when I remember that bookish child who adored reading and gear the work toward him.”—Bruce Coville ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bruce Coville is a man with many talents. A popular author, teacher, and playwright, he was born in Syracuse, New York on May 16, 1950. He attended Duke University, the State University of New York at Binghamton, and the State University College at Oswego, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education in 1973. Coville’s love of reading developed early in his childhood. “I was an absolute bookaholic. My father had something to do with this. . . . If anyone were to ask me what was the best thing he ever did for me, I could reply without hesitation that he read me Tom Swift in the City of Gold. Why he happened to read this to me I was never quite certain. But it changed my life. . . . I was hooked on books. I think it was sixth grade when I first realized that writing was something that I could do, and wanted to do very much.” The revelation that he wanted to be a children’s author came to Coville after reading Winnie the Pooh. “I suddenly knew that what I really wanted to write was children’s books—to give other children the joy that I got from books when I was young.” Coville started to write for children when he was 18, and sold his first book when he was 27. While trying to become a published writer, Coville had many other jobs including toymaker, camp counselor, gravedigger, assembly line worker, and associate editor for a magazine. He was also a teacher for seven years; he taught second and fourth grades and specialized in gifted education during the last three years. Coville has long had a special interest in the theater: “Acting, directing, writing—I love every aspect of it, and feel more alive when I am doing a show than at any other time.” He has written four plays, and as an actor, last appeared as William Shakespeare in George Bernard Shaw’s The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. In 1969, Coville married illustrator Kathy Dietz. She has illustrated several of his books including The Foolish Giant, Sarah’s Unicorn, and The Monster’s Ring. They have three children, Orion, Cara, and Adam. Bruce Coville has written many books for young readers and travels a great deal to schools all across the country to discuss his work. His book, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, is a vivid retelling of one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. A fantastic tale of mayhem, magic, and monsters enhanced by rich, dramatic illustrations, this picture book is the perfect introduction to Shakespeare for young readers. PRAISE THE FOOLISH GIANT “A treat for beginning readers and grand make-believe.”—Publishers Weekly
		Chris Crutcher (Amer.) “What I hope my writing reflects . . . is a sense of the connections between all human beings . . . and a different perspective on the true nature of courage. For me, those are things worth exploring and writing about.”—Chris Crutcher Chris Crutcher received the Margaret A. Edwards Award, which honors an author’s lifetime achievement for writing books that are perennially popular with teenagers. Congratulations! Chris Crutcher has been chosen as one of six writers selected by The Writer magazine to receive their 3rd annual "Writers Who Make a Difference" award. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Chris Crutcher’s dad was an Air Force pilot, and his parents were “just passing through” Dayton, Ohio, when Chris was born on July 17, 1946. Crutcher claims his parents “were in Cascade before I got dry,” referring to Cascade, Idaho, the small lumber and logging town of about 950 people where he was raised. As a youth, ALAN Award–winning and six-time ALA award-winning author Chris Crutcher was not an outstanding student. He attributes his academic non-achievements to having an older brother who was “real bright. He was the valedictorian of the class, and I don’t think he got anything under an A minus the whole time he was in high school. I got a good picture of what that was like and decided I didn’t want anything to do with it.” Not many people, least of all anyone connected with his education, would have imagined that Crutcher would ever become a writer. Though both of his parents were voracious readers, reading was not one of Chris’s favorite pastimes. In fact, he read a grand total of one book from cover to cover during his entire four years of high school. When it came to writing book reports, he invented titles for reports, as well as stories to go with them, and often got his authors from the pages of the Boise telephone directory. He also copied from his brother. Many times, Chris would “take one of his [brother’s] book reports and misspell a few words, take it ‘down’ a few notches, and turn it in.” After high school, Crutcher attended Eastern Washington State College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology/sociology. Chris admits he naively thought he could just turn up at the college of his choice on opening day and register. Upon learning in senior year that applications were necessary, “I ran down to the library. All the college catalogs were either black or blue, and Eastern’s was red, so I took it.” After graduation, he roamed around the country with a friend for a year. Then he went back to school for a teaching certificate. He spent nearly 10 years in Oakland, California, as Director of a K–12 alternative school for inner-city kids. In 1980, Crutcher moved back to Washington and settled in Spokane, where he works as a child and family therapist in a mental health center, focusing on child-abuse cases. “I didn’t start writing until I was 35. It’s hard to imagine my life not writing. I love it. There’s really a part of it that’s connection. When you’re watching somebody read your material and they smile and nod, you know you’ve found that place where your experience and their experience match, even though they aren’t the same exact experience. Any time I write something and you say, ‘Yah,’ boy, it’s a kick!” Chris Crutcher’s novels are a reflection of real life as he sees it. As in real life, his novels combine humor with difficult and serious situations. He draws heavily on his own experiences and on elements that have surrounded his life. For example, the tiny lumber town of Cascade, Idaho, where Crutcher grew up became the fictional village of Trout, Idaho, in his novel Running Loose. His experiences working for the alternative school in Oakland formed the basis of The Crazy Horse Electric Game. And the emphasis on swimming in Stotan! comes directly from Crutcher’s own involvement in this sport in college. His book Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes was praised by School Library Journal in a starred review as “a masterpiece.” In this darkly funny, suspenseful novel about friendship, a high-school senior tries to help his badly scarred best friend, Sarah Byrnes, deal with a horrific event in her past. PRAISE ATHLETIC SHORTS “A winning collection of stories. . . . The author seamlessly blends humor with more serious elements.”—Starred, School Library Journal “The characterizations in these stories are powerfully drawn, and the dialogue is quick and scorching.”—The Horn Book Magazine CHINESE HANDCUFFS “This many-faceted tale of a contemporary family . . . is a compelling, well-paced, and even humorous one of human failing, survival, and hope.”—The Horn Book Magazine “Characterization is sound and consistent. Crutcher’s writing has both insight and fluency.”—The Bulletin THE CRAZY HORSE ELECTRIC GAME “Resounding with compassion for people tripped up by their own weaknesses, this book explores sophisticated themes with both a poetic sensibility and gritty realism.”—Publishers Weekly “[Crutcher’s] voice is as clear and energetic as ever.”—The Bulletin IRONMAN “With its highly charged intensity channeled into riveting prose, an array of eccentric and strong characterizations, and dramatic plot climax . . . Ironman is a combination of the psychological and the sports novel at their best.”—Starred, Booklist “Crutcher again demonstrates his genius for tackling big issues and thought-provoking philosophies in an accessible and entertaining way.”—Starred, The Horn Book Magazine RUNNING LOOSE “A powerful and convincing portrayal . . . a keenly sensitive, honest depiction of Louie’s coming of age.”—Booklist “It’s more than just a sports story. It’s a tightly plotted, compelling tale. . . . Compassionate, funny, sensitive.”—Publishers Weekly STAYING FAT FOR SARAH BYRNES “Such superlatives as ‘riveting’ and ‘powerful’ can only hint at the craftsmanship on display in this transcendent story of love, loyalty, and courage. . . . Superb plotting, extraordinary characters, and crackling narrative make this novel one to be devoured in a single unforgettable sitting.”—Starred, Publishers Weekly “A masterpiece. . . . This type of novel is what many of today’s YAs are looking for: sophisticated characters and plot, with a healthy dose of black humor.”—Starred, School Library Journal “Pulse-pounding, on both visceral and intellectual levels—a wild, brutal ride.”—Starred, Kirkus Reviews STOTAN! “Crutcher’s novel more than moves and entertains; it teaches . . . young people about responsibility, about courage and heroism, and ultimately about life itself. Stotan! is very, very good.”—Starred, School Library Journal “Crutcher has written an involving, realistic novel; though it deals with tough, unsolvable issues, it is often leavened with humor.”—Publishers Weekly
		Jason Culp (Amer.) JASON CULP has appeared on television in Days of Our Lives and General Hospital and in the film Skinheads. His many theatrical performances include the role of Trigorin in The Seagull.
		Michael Cunningham (Amer.) Michael Cunningham is the author of Flesh and Blood, A Home at the End of the World, and, most recently, The Hours, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and soon to be a major film. He lives and works in New York City.
		Paula Danziger (Amer.) Friends themselves, Paula Danziger and Ann M. Martin are the creators of many books for young readers. Paula Danziger writes in Tara*Starr's voice in this novel, and Ann Martin in Elizabeth's. They created the book letter by letter, neither knowing exactly what would come next. Paula Danziger enjoys traveling and collecting beaded ad sequined shoes, and her idea of gardening is to plant wooden tulips. Ann Martin enjoys sewing and needlework, and her idea of traveling is to move from one room in her house to another.
		Kenneth C. Davis (Amer.) Kenneth C. Davis is the author of The New York Times bestselling DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT series featuring the Bible, the Civil War, history and geography. Davis appears regularly on national television and radio. He lives in New York with his wife and two children.
		Frank Delaney (Amer.) Frank Delaney is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Ireland as well as Simple Courage: The Story of S.S.Flying Enterprise–and One of the Greatest Naval Rescues in History. A former judge for the Man Booker Prize, Delaney enjoyed a prominent career in BBC broadcasting before becoming a full-time writer. Born in Tipperary, Ireland, he now lives in New York City and Connecticut. To schedule a speaking engagement, please contact American Program Bureau at www.apbspeakers.com
		E.L. Doctorow (Amer.) E. L. Doctorow's work has been published in thirty languages. His novels include Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate,The Waterworks, and The March. Among his honors are the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle awards, the PENFaulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. He lives and works in New York. To schedule a speaking engagement, please contact American Program Bureau at www.apbspeakers.com
		Dayton Duncan (Amer.) Dayton Duncan, writer and producer of Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, is the author of five other books, including Out West: An American Journey along the Lewis and Clark Trail, in which he retraced the route of the expedition. He has been a consultant on many of Ken Burns's documentary films and was the co-writer and consulting producer of the PBS series The West. Ken Burns, director and producer of Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery, has been making award-winning documentary films for more than twenty years, including the landmark PBS series The Civil War and Baseball, The West, and Thomas Jefferson. The subject of his next biographical film will be Frank Lloyd Wright, and he is currently producing a series on the history of jazz.
		Marc Eliot (Amer.) Marc Eliot is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books on popular culture, among them the highly acclaimed biography Cary Grant, the award-winning Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince, Down 42nd Street, Take It from Me (with Erin Brockovich), Down Thunder Road: The Making of Bruce Springsteen, To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles, and Death of a Rebel. He has been featured in many documentaries about film and music and has written on the media and popular culture for numerous publications, including Penthouse, L.A. Weekly, and California magazine. He divides his time among New York City; Woodstock, New York; and Los Angeles.
		Eve Ensler (Amer.) EVE ENSLER is an internationally acclaimed playwright whose many works for the stage include Floating Rhonda and the Glue Man, Lemonade, Necessary Targets, and The Vagina Monologues, for which she received an Obie Award. Performances of The Vagina Monologues, sponsored by V-Day (www.vday.org), have raised $25 million to stop violence against abused women and girls around the world. She lives in New York City. *The Good Body* starts with Eve’s tortured relationship with her own “post-forties” stomach and her skirmishes with everything from Ab Rollers to fad diets. As Eve hungrily seeks self-acceptance, she is joined by the voices of women from L.A. to Kabul, whose obsessions are also laid bare. Ultimately, these monologues become a personal wake-up call from Eve to love the “good bodies” we inhabit. The Broadway production of The Good Body opens in New York on November 15th, 2004. For information about tickets to the show visit www.thegoodbody.org
		Nora Ephron (Amer.) Nora Ephron is also the author of I Feel Bad About My Neck, Crazy Salad, Scribble Scribble, Wallflower at the Orgy, and Heartburn. She received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally…, Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle, which she also directed. Her other credits include the films Michael, You've Got Mail, and the play Imaginary Friends. She lives in New York City with her husband, writer Nicholas Pileggi.
		John Feinstein (Amer.) John Feinstein spent years on the staff at the Washington Post, as well as writing for Sports Illustrated and the National Sports Daily. He is a commentator on NPR's "Morning Edition," a regular on ESPN's "The Sports Reporters" and a visiting professor of journalism at Duke University. His first book, A Season on the Brink, is the bestselling sports book of all time. His first book for younger readers, Last Shot, was a bestseller. His current book for younger readers is Vanishing Act. A conversation with John Feinstein Q: LAST SHOT and VANISHING ACT feature two budding young journalists. Do you hope to inspire more children to pick up the pen with this novel? A:I think I'm a little bit like Bobby Kelleher in that I think it is important to steer kids to writing–and journalism–and not TV, which is the easy and popular way to go these days. TV is more glamorous, no doubt, but I know from personal experience that writing–and reporting–is far more fulfilling. I hope this book carries that message in some way... Q: How old were you when you started writing? Did you always know you wanted to be a writer? A:I spent most of my boyhood planning to be either the point guard for the Knicks or play centerfield for the Mets. By the time I went to college–as a swimmer–I knew that wasn't happening. I started working at the Duke student newspaper as a freshman and was pretty much hooked on journalism by the end of my freshman year. Q: Several real sports journalists play roles in your books. Are any of them aware that they are in your book? And how do they feel about the way you portray them? A:All the real people in the book are aware of their, "involvement." Most are amused; some are flattered; Tony Kornheiser has promised to sue me... Q: LAST SHOT features a serious conspiracy. Has anything comparable ever happened in the history of the Final Four? A:Point shaving scandals have been a problem in college basketball dating to the 1950s, when the sport was wracked by them, notably at City College of New York (which never recovered) and Kentucky. There have been numerous other point shaving scandals since then: Boston College in the early 80s; Tulane in 1985 and a rumor, never proven, that heavily-favored Nevada-Las Vegas dumped its 1991 Final Four game to Duke. Q: Your first two books were mysteries. Since then you have written all non-fiction. How did it feel to return to the “whodunit” genre? A:It was fun writing a mystery again; challenging to try to create a believable story in an environment that actually exists. The main difference between this and my other two mysteries is that the protagonists do not use a lot of the words used by the people in my first two mysteries. Q: What were some of your favorite books growing up? A:As a kid I read all the "Hardy Boys," books and "Chip Hilton," and "Bronc Burnett," both series about star athletes. I also read all the Signature and Landmark books, which really got me into history. When I got older I was very into historical novels: Johnny Tremain remains an all time favorite (recently read by my son) and, for some reason, I vividly remember reading, Journey to the Center of the Earth.
		Suzanne Finstad (Amer.) Suzanne Finstad is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, named the best film book of 2001 by the San Francisco Chronicle. Several of her books, including the bestseller Sleeping with the Devil, have been adapted into movies. Her most recent biography is Warren Beatty: A Private Man.
		Fannie Flagg (Amer.) Fannie Flagg began writing and producing television specials at age nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films, and the theater. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (which was produced by Universal Pictures as Fried Green Tomatoes), Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, Standing in the Rainbow, and A Redbird Christmas. Flagg’s script for Fried Green Tomatoes was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award. Flagg lives in California and in Alabama. Visit her website at www.fannie-flagg.com.
		Marshall Frady (Amer.) A native South Carolinian, Marshal Frady has been a journalist for over twenty-five years, writing principally on political figures and racial and social tensions in the American culture, first as a correspondent for Newsweek, then for Life, Harper's, Esquire, The New York Review of Books, The Sunday Times (London), The Atlantic Monthly, and most recently The New Yorker. In the 1980's, he was chief writer and correspondent for ABC News Closeup and a correspondent for Nightline. He is the author of the acclaimed biographies Wallace and Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness. He is currently at work on a novel.
		Charles Frazier (Amer.) Charles Frazier grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. Cold Mountain, his highly acclaimed first novel, was an international bestseller, and won the National Book Award in 1997.
		Stephen Fry (Brit.) As well as being the bestselling author of four novels, The Stars’ Tennis Balls, Making History, The Hippopotamus, and The Liar, and the first volume of his autobiography, Moab is My Washpot, Fry has played Peter in Peter’s Friends, Wilde in the film Wilde, Jeeves in the television series Jeeves & Wooster and Laurie in the television series Fry & Laurie.
		Jack Gantos (Amer.) Jack Gantos' writing career was first sparked as a child, when he read his sister's diary and decided he could do better. He has written books for all ages from children to adult, including the popular Rotten Ralph. He is nationally recognized as a leading presenter on creative writing and literature for both teachers and students.
		Daniel Gilbert (Amer.) Daniel Gilbert is the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He has won numerous awards for his teaching and research, and his scientific research has been covered by The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, Money, CNN, U.S. News & World Report, The New Yorker, Scientific American, Science, O: The Oprah Magazine, Psychology Today and others. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
		John Glover (Amer.) Jonathan Glover is Director of the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics at King's College, London. His previous books include Causing Death and Saving Lives and I: Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity.
		Myla Goldberg (Amer.) MYLA GOLDBERG is the author of the bestselling Bee Season, which was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2000 and made into a film, and, most recently, of Time's Magpie, a book of essays about Prague. Her short stories have appeared in Harper's and McSweeney's and on Failbetter.com. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
		Amy Grant (Amer.) Amy lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, country music star, Vince Gill. She has four children, Matt, Millie, Sarah, and Corrina, and one stepdaughter, Jenny.
		Graham Greene (Amer.) Graham Greene (1904–1991) worked as a journalist and critic, and was later employed by the foreign office. His many books include The Third Man, The Comedians and Travels with My Aunt. He is the subject of an acclaimed three-volume biography by Norman Sherry.
		John Grisham (Amer.) Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988, Grisham has written one novel a year (his other books are The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The Testament, The Brethren, A Painted House, Skipping Christmas, The Summons, The King of Torts, Bleachers, The Last Juror, and The Broker) and all of them have become international bestsellers. The Innocent Man (October 2006) marks his first foray into non-fiction. Grisham lives with his wife Renee and their two children Ty and Shea. The family splits their time between their Victorian home on a farm in Mississippi and a plantation near Charlottesville, VA.
		Laura Hamilton (Amer.) Laura Hamilton is a three-time recipient of ALA Notable Recording Awards and numerous Publishers Weekly “Listen Up” Awards for her audiobook narrations. She also records commercial voiceover spots for radio and TV. She lives in Chicago.
		Mark Victor Hansen (Amer.) Mark Victor Hansen is the coauthor of one of the biggest-selling book series in history, Chicken Soup for the Soul, with more than 80 million copies in print. Mark has been a public speaker for twenty-five years, entertaining and enlightening audiences worldwide. He is the author of five other books and six popular audio programs, and is the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards, including the Horatio Alger Award.
		Julie Harris (Amer.) Julie Harris's unforgettable perfomance in the lead role in The Member of the Wedding, both on Broadway and on film, first brought her fame. Her stage career has included highly acclaimed solo performances as Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst and as Isak Dineson in Lucifer's Child. Her film credits include East of Eden, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and Gorillas in the Mist.
		Thomas Harris (Amer.) Thomas Harris began his writing career covering crime in the United States and Mexico, and was a reporter and editor for the Associated Press in New York City. His first novel, Black Sunday, was published in 1975, followed by Red Dragon in 1981, The Silence of the Lambs in 1988, and Hannibal in 1999.
		Edward Hermann (Amer.) Edward Herrmann won a Tony Award for his work on Broadway in Mrs. Warren's Profession. On television, Mr. Herrmann won the TV Critics' Circle Ward for his portrayal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, one of the most honored productions in the history of television. His film work includes The Paper Chase, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Mrs. Soffel.
		Edward Herrmann (Amer.) Edward Herrmann won a Tony Award for his work on Broadway in Mrs. Warren's Profession. On television, Mr. Herrmann won the TV Critics' Circle Ward for his portrayal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, one of the most honored productions in the history of television. His film work includes The Paper Chase, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Mrs. Soffel.
		Carl Hiaasen (Amer.) Carl Hiaasen was born and raised in Florida. He is the author of ten previous novels, including the best-selling Skinny Dip, Sick Puppy, and Lucky You, and two best-selling children’s books, Hoot and Flush. He also writes a weekly column for The Miami Herald.
		Langston Hughes (Amer.) Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. After graduation from high school, he spent a year in Mexico with his father, then a year studying at Columbia University. His first poem in a nationally known magazine was "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," which appeared in Crisis in 1921. In 1925, he was awarded the First Prize for Poetry of the magazine Opportunity, the winning poem being "The Weary Blues," which gave its title to his first book of poems, published in 1926. As a result of his poetry, Mr. Hughes received a scholarship at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he won his B.A. in 1929. In 1943, he was awarded an honorary Litt.D. by his alma mater; he has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1935), a Rosenwald Fellowship (1940), and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Grant (1947). From 1926 until his death in 1967, Langston Hughes devoted his time to writing and lecturing. He wrote poetry, short stories, autobiography, song lyrics, essays, humor, and plays. A cross section of his work was published in 1958 as The Langston Hughes Reader.
		Molly Ivins (Amer.) Molly Ivins began her career in journalism as the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle. In 1970, she became co-editor of The Texas Observer, which afforded her frequent fits of hysterical laughter while covering Texas legislature. In 1976, Ivins joined The New York Times as a political reporter. The next year, she was named Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief, chiefly because there was no one else in the bureau. In 1982, she returned once more to Texas, which may have indicated a masochistic streak, and always had plenty to write about after that. Her column was syndicated in more than three hundred newspapers, and her freelance work appeared in Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and Harper's, and other publications. Her first book, Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?, spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list. Her books with Lou Dubose on George W. Bush-- Shrub, Bushwhacked, and Who Let the Dogs In?-- were national bestsellers. A three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, she claimed that her two greatest honors were that the Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her and that she was once banned from the campus of Texas A&M. Molly Ivins died in the Winter of 2007.
		Brian Jacques (Amer.) Brian Jacques was born in Liverpool in 1939. He left school at age fifteen and found work as a docker, a truck driver, a policeman and a stand-up comic, all before turning his attention to writing. He wrote his first novel, Redwall, for the children at a school for the blind in Liverpool. Since 1986, his descriptive style of writing has captivated readers from age 8 to 80. His books have won international awards and acclaim and have been made into a TV series.
		Tracy Kidder (Amer.) Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard, studied at the University of Iowa, and served as an army officer in Vietnam. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. He lives in Massachusetts and Maine.
		Jonathan Kirsch (Amer.) Jonathan Kirsch, a book columnist for the Los Angeles Times and author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Moses: A Life and The Harlot by the Side of the Road, writes and lectures widely on biblical, literary, and legal topics. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, President of PEN Center USA West, and a former correspondent for Newsweek, he lives in Los Angeles.
		Harold S. Kushner (Amer.) Harold S. Kushner is Rabbi Laureate of Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, where he resides. He has been honored by the Christophers, a Roman Catholic organization, as one of the fifty people who have made the world a better place in the last half century, and by Religion in American Life as the clergyman of the year in 1999. He is the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People and eight other books.
		Madeleine L'Engle (Amer.) Madeleine L'Engle was the author of more than forty-five books for all ages, among them the beloved A Wrinkle in Time, awarded the Newbery Medal; A Ring of Endless Light, a Newbery Honor Book; A Swiftly Tilting Planet, winner of the American Book Award; and the Austin family series of which Troubling a Star is the fifth book. L'Engle was named the 1998 recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards award, honoring her lifetime contribution in writing for teens. Ms. L'Engle was born in 1918 in New York City, late in her parents' lives,an only child growing up in an adult world. Her father was a journalist who had been a foreign correspondent, and although he suffered from mustard gas poisoning in World War I, his work still took him abroad a great deal. Her mother was a musician; the house was filled with her parents' friends: artists, writers, and musicians. "Their lives were very full and they didn't really have time for a child," she says. "So I turned to writing to amuse myself." When she was 12, Ms. L'Engle moved with her family to the French Alps in search of purer air for her father's lungs. She was sent to an English boarding school --"dreadful," she says. When she was 14, her family returned to America and she went to boarding school once again, Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina--which she loved. When she was 17, her father died. Ms. L'Engle spent the next four years at Smith College. After graduating cum laude, she and an assortment of friends moved to an apartment in Greenwich Village. "I still wanted to be a writer; I always wanted to be a writer, but I had to pay the bills, so I went to work in the theater," she says. Touring as an actress seems to have been a catalyst for her. She wrote her first book, The Small Rain, while touring with Eva Le Gallienne in Uncle Harry. She met Hugh Franklin, to whom she was married until his death in 1986, while they were rehearsing The Cherry Orchard, and they were married on tour during a run of The Joyous Season, starring Ethel Barrymore. Ms. L'Engle retired from the stage after her marriage, and the Franklins moved to northwest Connecticut and opened a general store. "The surrounding area was real dairy farmland then, and very rural. Some of the children had never seen books when they began their first year of school," she remembers. The Franklins raised three children--Josephine, Maria, and Bion. Ms. L'Engle's first book in the Austin quintet, Meet the Austins, an ALA Notable Children's Book, has strong parallels with her life in the country. But she says, "I identify with Vicky rather than with Mrs. Austin, since I share all of Vicky's insecurities, enthusiasms, and times of sadness and growth." When, after a decade in Connecticut, the family returned to New York, Ms. L'Engle rejoiced. "In some ways, I was back in the real world." Mr. Franklin resumed acting, and became well known as Dr. Charles Tyler in the television series All My Children. Two-Part Invention is Ms. L'Engle's touching and critically acclaimed story of their long and loving marriage. The Time quintet--A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time--are among her most famous books, but it took years to get a publisher to accept A Wrinkle in Time. "Every major publisher turned it down. No one knew what to do with it," she says. When Farrar, Straus & Giroux finally accepted the manuscript, she insisted that they publish it as a children's book. It was the beginning of their children's list." After splitting her time between New York City and Connecticut and acting as the librarian and writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Madeleine L’Engle died on September 7, 2007 at the age of 88. Ms. L’Engle will be remembered as a great writer who truly devoted herself to her work. “I think that fantasy must possess the author and simply use him,” she once said. “I know that is true of A Wrinkle in Time. I cannot possibly tell you how I came to write it. It was simply a book I had to write. I had no choice. It was only after it was written that I realized what some of it meant.” Author Fun Facts Born November 29 in New York City Education Smith College, The New School, Columbia University Currently lives New York City and Connecticut Fun Jobs Librarian, actress Favorite… …hobbies: traveling, reading, playing the piano, and cooking A Special Message from Madeleine L'Engle "I wrote my first story when I was 5. It was about a little G-R-U-L, because that’s how I spelled “girl” when I was 5. I wrote because I wanted to know what everything was about. My father, before I was born, had been gassed in the first World War, and I wanted to know why there wer wars, why people hurt each other, why we couldn’t get along together, and what made people tick. That’s why I started to write stories. The books I read most as a child were by Lucy Maud Montgomery, who’s best known for her Anne of Green Gables stories, but I also liked Emily of New Moon. Emily was an only child, as I was. Emily lived on an island, as did I. Although Manhattan Island and Prince Edward Island are not very much alike, they are still islands. Emily’s father was dying of bad lungs, and so was mine. Emily had some dreadful relative, and so did I. She had a hard time in school, and she also understood that there’s more to life than just the things that can be explained by encyclopedias and facts. Facts alone are not adequate. I love Emily. I also read E. Nesbit, who was a nineteenth-century writer of fantasies and family stories, and I read fairy tales and the myths of all countries. And anything I could get my hands on. As an adult, I like to read fiction. I really enjoy good murder mystery writers, usually women, frequently English, because they have a sense of what the human soul is about and why people do dark and terrible things. I also read quite a lot in the area of particle physics and quantum mechanics, because this is theology. This is about the nature of being. This is what life is all about. I try to read as widely as I possibly can. I wrote A Wrinkle in Time when we were living in a small dairy farm village in New England. I had three small children to raise, and life was not easy. We lost four of our closest friends within two years by death--that’s a lot of death statistically. And I really wasn’t finding the answers to my big questions in the logical places. So, at the time I discovered the world of particle physics. I discovered Einstein and relativity. I read a book of Einstein’s, in which he said that anyone who’s not lost in rapturous awe at the power and glory of the mind behind the universe is as good as a burnt-out candle. And I thought, “Oh, I’ve found my theologian, what a wonderful thing.” I began to read more in that area. A Wrinkle in Time came out of these questions, and out of my discovery of the post-utopian sciences, which knocked everything we knew about science for a loop. A Wrinkle in Time was almost never published. You can’t name a major publisher who didn’t reject it. And there were many reasons. One was that it was supposedly too hard for children. Well, my children were 7, 10, and 12 while I was writing it. I’d read to them at night what I’d written during the day, and they’d say, “Ooh, mother, go back to the typewriter!” A Wrinkle in Time” had a female protagonist in a science fiction book, and that wasn’t done. And it dealt with evil and things that you don’t find, or didn’t at that time, in children’s books. When we’d run through forty-odd publishers, my agent sent it back. We gave up. Then my mother was visiting for Christmas, and I gave her a tea party for some of her old friends. One of them happened to belong to a small writing group run by John Farrar, of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which at that time did not have a juvenile list. She insisted that I meet John any how, and I went down with my battered manuscript. John had read my first novel and liked it, and read this book and loved it. That’s how it happened. The most asked question that I generally receive is, “Where do you get your ideas?” That’s very easily answered. I tell a story about Johann Sebastian Bach when he was an old man. A student asked him, “Papa Bach, where do you get the ideas for all of these melodies?” And the old man said, “Why, when I get up in the morning, it’s all I can do not to trip over them.” And that’s how ideas are; they’re just everywhere. I think the least asked question is one that I got in Japan. This little girl held up her hand and said, “How tall are you?” In Japan, I am very tall. I get over one hundred letters a week. There are always letters that stand out. There was one from a 12-year-old girl in North Carolina who wrote me many years ago, saying “I’m Jewish and most of my friends are Christian. My Christian friends told me only Christians can be saved. What do you think? Your books have made me trust you.” Well, we corresponded for about twenty years. I suggested that she go back to read some of the great Jewish writers to find out about her own tradition. Another letter asked, “We’re studying the crusades in school. Can there be such a thing as a Holy War? Is war ever right?” I mean, kids don’t hesitate to ask questions. And it’s a great honor to have the kids say, “Your books have made me trust you.” The questions are not always about the books. They’re sometimes about the deepest issues of life. “Why did my parents put my grandmother in a nursing home?” That’s one that has come up several times. The letters are enlightening, particularly when they are written because the child wants to write them, and not just as a school assignment. Although one of the best batches of letters I ever had was from a high school biology class. The teacher had them read A Wind in the Door, which is about cellular biology, as part of their assignment. I thought, “What an innovative teacher. That was a lot of fun.” I have advice for people who want to write. I don’t care whether they’re 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can’t be a writer if you’re not a reader. It’s the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it’s for only half an hour — write, write, write." For more, visit www.madeleinelengle.com
		Anne Lamott (Amer.) Anne Lamott is the bestselling author of Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies and of five novels, including Rosie and Crooked Little Heart. She lives in Fairfax, California, with her son.
		Stephen Lang (Amer.) Stephen Lang has appeared on Broadway in Death of a Salesman, A Few Good Men, and Wait Until Dark. His films include Gods and Generals, Gettysburg, Tombstone, and Last Exit to Brooklyn.
		John Lavelle (Amer.) John Lavelle has appeared on Broadway in The Graduate. Other theater credits include As You Like It, Cymbeline, Picnic, Orphans, Rosencratz and Guildenstern, and Grease.
		Jonathan Lethem (Amer.) Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including the bestsellers THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE and MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of two short story collections, MEN AND CARTOONS and THE WALL OF THE SKY, WALL OF THE EYE, and a collection of autobiographical essays, THE DISSAPOINTMENT ARTIST. His stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Esquire, McSweeny's, Tin House, The New York Times and others. He was recently granted a MacArthur Genius Award. He lives in Brooklyn and Maine.
		Mark Linn-Baker (Amer.) Mark Linn-Baker has appeared on Broadway in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, and Doonesbury. His film and television credits include My Favorite Year, Noises Off, and seven seasons of ABC’s Perfect Strangers.
		Cindy Lu (Amer.) A professional actress for over eighteen years, Cindy Lu has performed in theatres across the country and in dozens of television shows, films, and commercials. The Four Man Plan began as a one-woman show in Los Angeles. Between dates and acting gigs, she spent time as a waitress, a bartender, a personal assistant, and an energy healer. Cindy Lu lives in Culver City, California, with her husband, Earl, and their three dogs.
		Steve Martin (Amer.) STEVE MARTIN is a celebrated writer, actor, and performer. His film credits include The Jerk, Father of the Bride, and The Spanish Prisoner, as well as Roxanne, L.A. Story, and Bowfinger, for which he also wrote the screenplays. He is the author of the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile and of the bestselling collection of comic pieces Pure Drivel, as well as the bestselling novellas The Pleasure of My Company and Shopgirl, which was made into a popular movie. His work appears frequently in The New Yorker and the New York Times. He lives in Los Angeles.
		Frances Mayes (Amer.) FRANCES MAYES is the author of four books about Tuscany. The now-classic Under the Tuscan Sun–which was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years and became a Touchstone movie starring Diane Lane. It was followed by Bella Tuscany and two illustrated books, In Tuscany and Bringing Tuscany Home. She is also the author of the novel, Swan, six books of poetry, and The Discovery of Poetry. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages.
		Ian McEwan (Amer.) Born in 1948, the son of a Scots sergeant-major, Ian McEwan's childhood was a typical army one of the time - moving from Aldershot to Singapore and then again to Tripoli so at the age of eleven he was sent away to Woolverstone Hall, a state-run boarding school. He describes himself as 'a very mediocre pupil' until he was seventeen, when he began to find English literature exciting. After graduating from Sussex University he went on to do an MA course in creative writing at East Anglia, under the direction of Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson, and began writing short stories. His first short story, Homemade, was accepted by The New American Review and the money earned from its publication paid the way for a trip to Afghanistan. In 1972 he returned to England and taught English as a second language whilst writing. In 1975 his volume of short stories First Love, Last Rites was published to sensational critical acclaim. Al Alvarez hailed it as a 'brilliant debut by the most promising writer around' and Anthony Thwaite described the book as 'a brilliant performance... with an originality astonishing for a writer still in his twenties.' It won the Somerset Maugham Award and revitalised the short story form. In 1978, his second collection of stories In Between the Sheets, with the now familiar McEwan themes of adolescent sexual awakenings, the perverse and the macabre, shocked the English literary establishment. 'What is strange and subterranean about human nature interest me far more than writing fiction about people accumulating wealth or losing wealth.' In 1978, The Cement Garden, his first novel, was published to great acclaim - 'a near perfect novelist' (The Spectator). In 1979, his television play Solid Geometry made the headlines when the BBC banned it, ostensibly for a scene displaying a pickled penis in a jar...and Ian McEwan was established as 'a leading literary spokesman for his generation'. In 1980, the BBC production of The Imitation Game gained instant recognition - 'A Play for Today of rare distinction' (Clive James). In 1981, his second novel The Comfort of Strangers was published and again, hailed as the work of one of the most outstanding writers of the 20th century. 'McEwan has already created a style and a vision of his own...no-one can afford not to read him.' (John Fowles). The Comfort of Strangers was shortlisted for the 1981 Booker Prize. The Child in Time, his third novel, published in 1987, won the Whitbread Award for the best novel of that year. Phenomenally well received, it drew high praise from Craig Raine and Jeanette Winterson and John Carey said in the Sunday Times: 'If you want to be appalled, refreshed, exhilarated, enlivened - read it.' The Innocent, published in 1990, was an extraordinary achievement. He took a genre until then dominated by Deighton and le Carre - and completely reinvented it. 'It displays the immaculate artistry we have come to expect from one of Britain's most highly respected novelists,' Sunday Times. Black Dogs was published in 1993 and once again the plaudits followed; '...testament to one of recent fiction's most remarkable regeneration: McEwan's transformation from a purveyor of knowingly nasty tales to a novelist unsurpassed for his responsive, responsible humanity.' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times Enduring Love was published in September 1997 to huge critical and commercial success; ‘Enduring Love is an excellent book, executed with all McEwan’s customary panache, all his usual readability and screw-tightening.’ Mail on Sunday. The film adaptation is released in November 2004. Atonement was published in 2002 and went on to be a huge bestseller.
		James Merrill (Amer.) James Merrill was born on March 3, 1926, in New York City and died on February 6, 1995. From the mid-1950s on, he lived in Stonington, Connecticut, and for extended periods he also had houses in Athens and Key West. From The Black Swan (1946) through A Scattering of Salts (1995), he wrote twelve books of poems, ten of them published in trade editions, as well as The Changing Light at Sandover (1982). He also published two plays, The Immortal Husband (1956) and The Bait (1960); two novels, The Seraglio (1957, reissued 1987) and The (Diblos) Notebook (1965, reissued 1994); a book of essays, interviews, and reviews, Recitative (1986); and a memoir, A Different Person (1993). Over the years, he was the winner of numerous awards for his poetry, including two National Book Awards, the Bollingen Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress. He was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser are James Merrill’s literary executors. J. D. McClatchy has published six volumes of poetry and two collections of essays. He teaches at Yale and is the editor of The Yale Review. Stephen Yenser has written three books of criticism (one about Merrill) and a volume of poems. He is a professor of English and the director of Creative Writing at UCLA. James Merrill’s Collected Poems is available in Knopf paperback. The Voice of the Poet: James Merrill is available from Random House Audio.
		Sue Miller (Amer.) Sue Miller is the best-selling author of the novels Lost in the Forest, The World Below, While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, and The Good Mother; the story collection Inventing the Abbots; and the memoir The Story of My Father. She lives in Boston, Massachussetts.
		Thomas Moore (Amer.) Thomas Moore is the author of Care of the Soul, which spent forty-six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and fifteen other books on deepening spirituality and cultivating the soul in every aspect of life. He has been a monk, a musician, a university professor, and a psychotherapist, and today he lectures widely on holistic medicine, spirituality, psychotherapy, and ecology. He also writes fiction and music and often works with his wife, artist and yoga instructor Joan Hanley. He writes regular columns for Resurgence, Spirituality & Health, and Beliefnet.com. He has two children and lives in New England.
		Michael Morpurgo (Amer.) Michael Morpurgo and Michael Foreman have previously collaborated on several critically acclaimed and popular picture books, including: The Last Wolf and The Rainbow Bear.
		Edmund Morris (Amer.) Edmund Morris was born and educated in Kenya and went to college in South Africa. He worked as an advertising copywriter in London before immigrating to the United States in 1968. His biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award in 1980. After spending several years as President Reagan’s authorized biographer, he published the national bestseller Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan in 1999. He has written extensively on travel and the arts for such publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Harper’s Magazine. Edmund Morris lives in New York and Washington with his wife and fellow biographer, Sylvia Jukes Morris.
		Toni Morrison (Amer.) TONI MORRISON has been the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Princeton University. She lives in Rockland County, New York, and Princeton, New Jersey.
		Bill Moyers (Amer.) BILL MOYERS was a founding organizer of the Peace Corps, a senior White House assistant (and press secretary) to President Lyndon Johnson from 1963 until 1967, publisher of Newsday, senior news analyst for CBS News, and producer of many of public television’s groundbreaking series. He is the winner of more than thirty Emmy awards and nine Peabody awards, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television, the Career Achievement Award from the International Documentary Association, and the Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts by the American Film Institute. Among his bestselling books are Listening to America, A World of Ideas, The Power of Myth (with Joseph Campbell), and Moyers on America. He serves as the pro-bono president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.
		Phyllis Newman (Amer.) Phyllis Newman began her career as a child entertainer in vaudeville and has appeared in many Broadway productions and television series including One Life to Live and thirtysomething.
		Frank O'Hara (Amer.) Frank O'Hara (1926-1966) was an American poet and a key member, along with Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler, of what is known as the New York School of poetry.
		Bill O'Reilly (Amer.) BILL O’REILLY, a two-time Emmy Award winner for excellence in reporting, served as national correspondent for ABC News and as anchor of the nationally syndicated news magazine program Inside Edition before becoming executive producer and anchor of Fox News’s wildly popular The O’Reilly Factor. He is author of the mega-bestsellers The O’Reilly Factor, The No Spin Zone, and Who’s Looking Out for You?, as well as The O’Reilly Factor for Kids and the novel Those Who Trespass. He holds master’s degrees from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Boston University. .
		Barack Obama (Amer.) BARACK OBAMA is the junior U.S. senator from Illinois and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Michelle, and two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
		Mary Pope Osborne (Amer.) “I’m one of those very lucky people who absolutely loves what they do for a living. There is no career better suited to my eccentricities, strengths, and passions than that of a children’s book author.”—Mary Pope Osborne Mary Pope Osborne is the author of the popular Magic Tree House series. She works with her husband Will and her sister Natalie on the nonfiction companion series, Magic Tree House Research Guides. Many of her books have been named to best-books lists. ABOUT THE AUTHOR “I grew up in the military. By the time I was 15, I had lived in Oklahoma, Austria, Florida, and four different army posts in Virginia and North Carolina. Moving was never traumatic for me, but staying in one place was. When my dad finally retired to a small town in North Carolina, I nearly went crazy with boredom. I craved the adventure and changing scenery of our military life. Miraculously, one day I found these things, literally only a block away—at the local community theater. From then on, I spent nearly every waking hour after school there. “After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 1970s, I lived an intensely varied life. For a while I camped in a cave on the island of Crete. Then I joined up with a small band of European young people heading to ‘The East.’ We traveled through 11 Asian countries and nearly lost our lives, first in an earthquake in northern Afghanistan and then in a riot in Kabul. My trip came to an abrupt halt in Katmandu when I got blood poisoning. During the two weeks I spent in a missionary hospital there, I read all of the Tolkien trilogy. To this day, my journey to ‘The East’ is tangled up in my mind with Frodo’s adventures. “After I returned home and recovered from my illness, I promptly headed back into the real world. I worked as a window dresser, as a medical assistant, and as a Russian travel consultant. One night I attended the opening of a musical about Jesse James. From the balcony, I fell in love with Will Osborne, the actor/musician playing Jesse. I loved his boots and his white cowboy hat; I loved how he sang and strummed the guitar. A year later, in New York City, we were married. “Thereafter, when I wasn’t on the road with Will, I worked as a waitress, taught acting classes in a nursing home, was a bartender, and had a job as an assistant editor for a children’s magazine. “Then one day, out of the blue, I began writing a story about an 11-year-old girl in the South. The girl was a lot like me, and many of the incidents in the story were similar to happenings in my childhood. The first draft was crudely written, but it must have communicated something to an editor, because shortly after I finished, it became a young adult novel called Run, Run Fast as You Can. Finally, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. "Now 24 years and 80 books later, I think I’m one of the most fortunate people on earth. Whenever I work on a book, I feel as if I’ve traveled to some amazing place in the world. Writing Tales from the Odyssey, I sailed with Odysseus through the ancient Greek world. Working on the Spider Kane Mysteries, I spent time in an abandoned cottage garden with a group of nutty and wonderful insects. Working on my novel Haunted Waters, I lived in a haunted castle with a sea spirit. While working on my new picture book, Pompeii: Lost and Found, I felt as if I myself were excavating an ancient Roman city. And of course, with my Magic Tree House series, I take daily journeys with Jack and Annie to different times and places, from the prehistoric world of dinosaurs to the world of Camelot. Though there are 36 books of fiction and 13 non-fiction books in the Magic Tree House series now, I don’t think I’ll ever run out of places to travel to in my imagination. "The Magic Tree House has also whisked me to schools all over the country, and the contact I now have with millions of readers has brought overwhelming joy into my life. I love the letters I get and I love reading the countless Magic Tree House stories that children themselves have written. I feel as if my readers and I are all exploring the creative process together, using our imaginations and writing skills to take us wherever we want to go. This, I tell my small fellow authors, is true magic." MARY POPE OSBORNE ON THE MAGIC TREE HOUSE SERIES We passed an old dilapidated tree house . . . I spent a year trying different ways to get two kids back in time. I tried an enchanted cellar with magic whistles, an enchanted museum, and an enchanted artist’s studio. I wrote seven different manuscripts using different magical devices and nothing worked. Then on a walk in the country with my husband, we passed an old dilapidated tree house. We started talking about the tree house . . . and continued talking about it. The next day I tried writing about it—to see if it might possibly be magic. And it was. I’m aching to hang out with penguins . . . My stories always coincide with my personal interests, which seem fairly unlimited at this point. I find that the more you learn, the more you want to learn. I want to take Jack and Annie to Antarctica. I’m aching to hang out with penguins. They started dreaming me up . . . At first I just dreamed Jack and Annie up. They seem so happy and complete. I don’t want to subject them to the awful peer pressure that comes with growing older. They’d probably start hanging around the mall instead of climbing into the tree house. My brothers and I had great adventures on our bikes and in the woods and on the beach where we lived. We felt as though we’d been to far distant worlds by the time we came home—adventures we happily kept to ourselves. I want kids to live through Jack and Annie’s independent journeys as well as their own! It’s harmonious teamwork . . . My editor has had an incalculable impact on these books. She has worked on all [the] books to date, and has been a great inspiration and guide. The series has a wonderful illustrator, Sal Murdocca. Sal researches the illustrations himself, and he’s very flexible and open to my ideas. The series’ designer and editor also have input into the art. It’s harmonious teamwork. MARY POPE OSBORNE ON MARY POPE OSBORNE I’m a creature of constant change . . . No two days of writing for the last 20 odd years have been the same. I write at every time of the day. I carry my laptop to every part of the house—or to places outside the house. I’m a creature of constant change. I do a lot of research before I start writing, but I do a great deal more after I start writing, as I confront more and more questions about the subject matter. I’m living an extraordinary life . . . The best part of being a writer is being transported to other places and living other experiences. By surrounding myself with the smells, weather, animals, and people of imaginary landscapes, I feel as if I’m living an extraordinary life. The worst part of being a writer is not having enough time or energy to write all the things I want to write. I started writing poetry in high school . . . I was living in North Carolina and I loved the work of Thomas Wolfe. Not until my late twenties did I have any idea I could be a writer. I only knew that I loved living in my imagination, and that no matter what job I was doing, my mind and thoughts were elsewhere. I was ready to settle for being a professional daydreamer. I’ve had too many favorite authors to list . . . As a child, I loved Frances Hodgson Burnett and Laura Ingalls Wilder. In my teen years: Thomas Wolfe, J. D. Salinger, Hermann Hesse, and Jack Kerouac. In my twenties: Tolstoy, Nabokov, E. B. White, and Colette. Since then I’ve had too many to list. The Little Princess, The Three Ugly Sisters, and Big Farmer Big were my favorite books. To aspiring writers: Write, write, write. Always try to have fun and at the same time always do the hard work of rewriting. Mary Pope Osborne is the author of many highly acclaimed books for children and young adults, including novels, picture books, biographies, mysteries, and retellings of fairy tales, myths, and tall tales. She has completed two terms as president of the Author’s Guild, the leading organization for professional writers in the United States. PRAISE THE MAGIC TREE HOUSE SERIES “Mary Pope Osborne provides nicely paced excitement for young readers, and there’s just enough information mixed in so that children will take away some historical fact along with a sense of accomplishment at having completed a chapter book.”—Children’s Literature on the Magic Tree House series “A rousing adventure tale filled with dancing fairies, white stags, and hideous beasts.”—School Library Journal on Christmas in Camelot AMERICAN TALL TALES —A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year —A Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book —An NCSS–CBC Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies —An ABC Children’s Booksellers’ Choice Award MOONHORSE —An American Bookseller Pick of the Lists —A Parents Magazine Best Book of the Year SPIDER KANE AND THE MYSTERY AT JUMBO NIGHTCRAWLER’S —An Edgar Award Nominee for Best Juvenile Mystery SPIDER KANE AND THE MYSTERY UNDER THE MAY-APPLE —A Parents’ Choice Story Book Honor —A Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street College Best Book of the Year ONE WORLD, MANY RELIGIONS The Ways We Worship —An Orbis Pictus Honor Book, National Council of Teachers of English
		Chuck Palahniuk (Amer.) Chuck Palahniuk's seven novels are the bestselling Haunted, Lullaby, Fight Club (which was made into a film by director David Fincher), Diary, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Choke. He is also the author of the nonfiction profile of Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journeys series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.
		Gary Paulsen (Amer.) “We have been passive. We have been stupid. We have been lazy. We have done all the things we could do to destroy ourselves. If there is any hope at all for the human race, it has to come from young people. Not from adults.”—Gary Paulsen A three-time Newbery Honor winner, Gary Paulsen is also winner of the 1997 Margaret A. Edwards Award, which honors an author’s lifetime contribution to writing books for teenagers. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Writing is so much a part of the way I live . . . Writing is so much a part of the way I live that I would be lost without the discipline and routine. I write every day—every day—and it gives me balance and focus. Every day I wake up, usually at 4:30 a.m., with the sole purpose of sitting down to write with a cup of hot tea and a computer or a laptop or a pad of paper—it doesn’t matter. I’ve written whole books in my office, in a dog kennel with a headlamp, on more airplanes than I can remember, on the trampoline of my catamaran off the shores of Fiji—it never matters where I write, just where the writing takes me. Everything else I do is just a path to get me to that moment when I start to work. Sometimes I’m lucky and the living part of life gets folded into the writing part, like with Dogsong and the Brian books and Caught by the Sea and How Angel Peterson Got His Name. Those books were based on personal inspection at zero altitude, I took experiences that I had and turned them into books. I’ve spent a great deal of time in the outdoors, but not with the specific goal of writing about it later. I’ll be honest, though, and tell you that I enjoyed writing about those times as much as, if not more than, I enjoyed living through those times in the first place. I didn’t start writing until I was 26 years old. I look back now and wonder what I thought I was supposed to be doing with my time before that. I’ve experimented with different voices and styles . . . Sometimes the way to tell a story is even more important than the story itself. I’ve experimented with different voices and styles and genres over the years. The Glass Café and Harris and Me were born of the voices of people I could not get out of my head. Tony was a boy I knew back when I lived in Hollywood and Harris was a cousin from my childhood. To honor their voices, I wrote the books in very different styles. Tony had a fast-paced, breathless speaking style and I had fun trying to capture that on paper. And the best way to paint a picture of Harris was to detail all those crazy stunts of his. Nightjohn and Soldier’s Heart were the result of studying history. Sarny came from the research I did in the National Archives when I stumbled across the Slave Narratives. And I discovered Charley Goddard when reading a book about the Minnesota First Volunteers. I hadn’t expected to find characters for books of my own when I started reading, but I could not shake them until I tried to figure out on paper what their lives must have been like. I am still amazed by the gifts that writing gives to me . . . Even after all these years, I am still amazed by the gifts that writing gives to me. There is not only the satisfaction from the hard work—and even after all this time and all these books, it is still very hard work for me to make a book—and the way the hair rises on the back of my neck when a story works for me, but also the relationships I have made with the people who read my books. The one true measure of success for me has always been the readers . . . People ask me about the kind of money I make and how many awards I’ve received, but the one true measure of success for me has always been the readers. I give the checks to my wife and my agent keeps the awards for me. The only thing I have in my office, other than junk and work and research, is a framed letter from one of my readers. That means more