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Scott Turow is a writer and attorney. He is the author of eight best-selling works of fiction, including his first novel, Presumed Innocent (1987) and the forthcoming sequel, Innocent to be published by Grand Central Publishing in May, 2010. He has also written two non-fiction books about his experiences in the law. Mr. Turow has been a partner in the Chicago office of Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal, a national law firm, since 1986, concentrating on white collar criminal defense, while also devoting a substantial part of his time to pro bono matters. He has served on a number of public bodies, including the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment to recommend reforms to Illinois’ death penalty system, and was the first Chair of Illinois’ Executive Ethics Commission which was created in 2004 to regulate executive branch employees in the Illinois State government. In 1997-1998, Mr. Turow served as president of the Authors Guild, completing the term of the late J. Anthony Lukas.
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Judy Blume’s twenty-eight titles range from picture books to bestselling novels, including Wifey, Smart Women, and Summer Sisters. She is perhaps best known for her books for young people, among them Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Tiger Eyes, Forever, and the Fudge books. Most recently, Judy has completed a four-title series – The Pain & the Great One books – illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist James Stevenson. Her books have been translated into thirty-one languages. In 1996 she received the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award for a body of work that has spoken to young adults for more than twenty years. In 2004 she was awarded the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She serves on the boards of the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and the Key West Literary Seminar. Judy has begun work on a new YA novel.
Credit: Ali Smith
Meg Cabot is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty-five series and books for both adults and tweens/teens, selling over fifteen million copies worldwide. Her Princess Diaries series, which is currently being published in more than 38 countries, was made into two hit movies by Disney. Meg is currently writing a middle grade series called Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls, as well the Heather Wells mystery series for adult readers. Insatiable, Meg's first paranormal romance for adult readers, will be out in June 2010, and Abandon, the first book in her new paranormal romance series for young adult readers, will be out in April 2011. Meg divides her time between Key West, Indiana, and New York City with a primary cat (one-eyed Henrietta), various back-up cats, and her husband.
Credit: Misty Richmond
Michelle Richmond is the author of the New York Times and international bestseller The Year of Fog, No One You Know, Dream of the Blue Room, and the award-winning story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress. She is the recipient of the 2009 Hillsdale Award for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Mississippi Review Fiction Prize, and the Associated Writing Programs Award. Two of her novels have been finalists for the Northern California Book Award. Her stories and essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, Playboy, Oxford American, Salon, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. Michelle holds an MFA from the University of Miami, where she was a James Michener Fellow. She has taught in the MFA programs in Creative Writing at the University of San Francisco, California College of the Arts, St. Mary’s College of Moraga, and Bowling Green State University. A native of Mobile, Alabama, Michelle lives with her husband and son in San Francisco. She is currently at work on a new novel, which will be published by Bantam. Her debut novel, Dream of the Blue Room(2003), will also be available in a new paperback edition from Bantam next year.
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T.J. Stiles is the author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the 2009 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. He has written for the New York Times Book Review, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic online, Smithsonian, and Salon.com, among other publications, and taught nonfiction creative writing at Columbia University. He served as historical advisor and on-screen expert for "Jesse James" and "Grand Central," two films in the PBS documentary series The American Experience. A native of Benton County, Minnesota, Stiles studied history at Carleton College and Columbia University, and resided in New York City for twenty years. He now lives in the Presidio of San Francisco with his wife and son.
Peter Petre co-authored Alan Greenspan's memoir, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Mr. Petre co-authored two other bestsellers as well: General Norman Schwarzkopf's It Doesn't Take A Hero and Thomas J. Watson, Jr.'s Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond. For over 20 years, Mr. Petre wrote and edited at Fortune magazine. He was executive editor and directed coverage of information technology, biotechnology, medicine, industrial technology, and science. Mr. Petre holds a B.A. from the University of Iowa and an M.A. in comparative literature from Johns Hopkins University, and lives in Manhattan with his wife, Ann Banks. He is at work on another collaboration and is an organizer of Techonomy, an economics and technology conference scheduled for August.
Pat Cummings is the author and/or illustrator of more than 30 books and edited the award-winning series, Talking With Artists, which profiles prominent children's book illustrators. Her Talking With Adventurers, from National Geographic, features explorers and scientists such as Jane Goodall and Robert Ballard. Recipient of the Orbis Pictus, Coretta Scott King and Boston Globe-Horn Book awards, she writes and illustrates books for children from "their first taste of a board-book until they outgrow pictures." In addition to having her books appear on Reading Rainbow, she wrote for Nickelodeon's Gullah Gullah Island and, as a member of the Authors Guild children's book committee, helped coordinate programs, including one on writing for television. She is on the Board of Advisors of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators and The Eric Carle Museum. She now teaches children's book illustration and writing at Parsons The New School for Design and Pratt Institute.
