Presenters
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Jack Althouse is a national award-winning architect with thirty years of experience. He is the principal owner of a ten member architectural firm that serves clients across eighteen states and six countries. His
day job fuels his passion to study and explore ancient architecture and uncover world-wide evidence of pre-Columbian contact between far flung ancient cultures. Over the last twenty-two years, Jack has been privileged to explore twenty-nine countries over four continents, from Peru to Russia. Many he has visited multiple times and in some locations lived for extended periods of time.

Jack and his wife have been happily married for twenty-five insane years. They have five children, two who were adopted from Russia. Jack and his wife are involved in many Christian organizations. They take turns volunteering for short-term overseas missions work. Their shared passion is to reach out to the poorest and most destitute peoples of the world, especially orphans. One of Jack’s dreams is to use proceeds from a writing career while keeping active in his architectural profession. He hopes to fund current pro bono work he is engaged in to the construction of an orphanage he is designing in Egypt, an AIDS hospital he is designing in Kigoma, Tanzania, and a church he and his son are helping to build in Patzun, Guatemala. 

Jack's first novel Second Sight sold over a thousand copies in five
states. His sequel Second Birth is with the publisher undergoing final
edit.

JAMES SCOTT BELL is the author of the #1 bestseller for writers, Plot & Structure, and numerous thrillers, including Deceived, Try Dying, Try Darkness, Try Fear, One More Lie and Watch Your Back, He is a winner of the Christy Award for Excellence (Suspense category) and has been a finalist three times. He served as the fiction columnist for Writer's Digest magazine and has written highly popular craft books for Writers Digest Books, including: Revision & Self-Editing, The Art of War for Writers and Conflict & Suspense.

Jim taught writing at Pepperdine University and at numerous writers conferences in the United States, Canada and Great Britain. He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara where he studied writing with Raymond Carver. He graduated with honors from the University of Southern California Law Center, and has written over 300 articles and numerous books for the legal profession. He has had three feature screenplays optioned and is on the faculty of Act One, the Hollywood screenwriting program.

 A former trial lawyer, Jim now writes and speaks full time. He appeared as an expert commentator on Good Morning America, CBS radio, and in Newsweek magazine during the O. J. Simpson murder trial. His book on search and seizure law is the leading authority in its field, used extensively by lawyers and judges throughout California every day. He lives in Los Angeles. His website is www.JamesScottBell.com.

Randall Brown is the author of the award-winning flash fiction collection Mad to Live (Flume Press 2008), a collection recently reprinted as deluxe version by PS Press, 2011. He teaches at and directs the MFA in Writing Program at Rosemont College. He is founder and editor of Matter Press and its literary magazine, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. He holds an MFA from Vermont College and a BA from Tufts University—along with an M.Ed. and a B.S. in Education. His essay on (very) short fiction appears in The Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field (Rose Metal Press 2009), a Book of the Year finalist. His blog FlashFiction.Net is one of the foremost resources for fans, editors, writers, and teachers of flash fiction. His work has been published and anthologized widely, both online and in print.

Hana Haatainen Caye is an award-winning writer, editor and voice-over talent serving the creative needs of clients worldwide. She leads Writers at Work, a Pittsburgh-based monthly writing workshop. Her book, Vinegar Fridays, based on a popular feature of her blog, Green Grandma, was released in November 2011.

Mindy Starns Clark is the bestselling author of 17 books, both fiction and nonfiction. A former stand-up comedian, Mindy is also a popular playwright and inspirational speaker. She lives with her husband and two daughters near Valley Forge, PA

Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, a web-based manuscript evaluation, editing and writing support service. Since ending her 19-year career as a dance critic and arts journalist for The Morning Call daily newspaper (Allentown, PA) and other publications, she has been writing women’s fiction and memoir, which is now represented by Katie Shea of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. During the past decade she has served in a variety of positions on the board of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group, including two terms as president and conference chair, and serves as well on the board of the Philadelphia Writers Conference. She has spoken about writing and the publication process in person for writers groups, libraries, and schools, and on television and radio as well. She blogs at Healing Through Writing and at The Blood-Red Pencil, where she is a contributing editor.

Joyce McDonald is the author of several critically acclaimed books for teens and young readers, among them Swallowing Stones, Shadow People, Shades of Simon Gray, Comfort Creek, Homebody and Mail-Order Kid.  Honors and awards include ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults, Booklist’s Best of the Best 100, New York Public Library’s Book for the Teen Age, VOYA’s “Books in the Middle” Outstanding Title of the Year, ALA/YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults, and an Edgar Award nomination.  Her latest novel is Devil on My Heels (Delacorte). Her books have been nominated for numerous state awards and are on several state reading lists. She has taught literature and creative writing at Drew University and East Stroudsburg University, and currently teaches in the Brief-residency MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University. Visit Joyce at www.joycemcdonald.net

Kristin Bair O’Keeffe is an author, speaker, writing instructor, and cultural spelunker who repatriated to the United States in late 2010 after nearly five years in China. Her debut novel Thirsty was published in 2009, and her essays and articles about bears, off-the-plot expats, and how to nudge forth a global identity have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, The Gettysburg Review, Bluestem, The Baltimore Review, Poets & Writers Magazine, San Diego Family Magazine, and other publications.

If she’s not hunkered down in writerhead, Kristin can often be found helping other writers achieve this delicious state of writerly nirvana. She has an MFA in fiction writing, as well as seventeen years of workshop experience. She currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts (Lowell) and is in the process of designing and launching an online writing initiative for global nomads. To learn more, visit www.writerhead.com.

 www.kristinbairokeeffe.com

Dr. Katherine Ramsland knows the value of research. From attending "dead" dinners to tracking down ghosts to learning forensics, she has turned research into adventure. Katherine has master's degrees, respectively, in forensic psychology, clinical psychology, and criminal justice, and a Ph.D. in philosophy. She teaches forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University in Pennsylvania, and consults for law enforcement.

She has published more than 900 articles and forty books, including Piercing the Darkness: Undercover with Vampires in America Today, The Forensic Psychology of Criminal Minds, The CSI Effect, The Devil’s Dozen: How Cutting-edge Forensics Took Down Twelve Notorious Serial Killers, Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, The Human Predator: A Historical Chronology of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation, and The Mind of a Murderer: Privileged Access to the Demons that Drive Extreme Violence. She has consulted for CSI and Bones, and has participated on numerous documentaries for CBS, ABC, A&E, Biography, ID, E!, WE, and Court TV. 

Katherine presents workshops to law enforcement, psychologists, social workers, probation/parole organizations, judges, and attorneys. She speaks on subjects ranging from serial killers to psychological investigations to cognitive aspects of decision-making, and more recently, on her psychological research for Snap! Seizing Your Aha! Moments.

GAYLE ROPER is the award winning author of more than forty-five books. Her novel Autumn Dreams won the prestigious Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award for Best Inspirational Romance. Caught Redhanded was named Book of the Year by ACFW and Summer Shadows won the Inspirational Readers Choice Contest. She has been a Christy finalist three times for her novels Spring Rain, Summer Shadows and Winter Winds and has won the Holt Medallion three times for The Decision, Caught in a Bind, and Autumn Dreams. The Decision won the Reviewers Choice Award, and she has received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Of her title, Fatal Deduction (Multnomah), Publishers Weekly states, “Roper’s dialogue and character development are spot-on, which is no small feat, considering that Libby’s world is peopled by everyone from elderly patricians to two-bit gangsters…This novel is a pleasure from start to finish.”

For her work in training Christian writers Gayle has won special recognition from Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference, St. Davids CWC, Florida CWC, and Greater Philadelphia CWC. She directed the St. Davids conference for five years and Sandy Cove for six. She served as writer in residence with Christian Leaders, Authors and Speakers Services (CLASS) for several years. She currently serves as captain of the Mount Hermon CWC Mentoring Clinic program.

 She lives in southeastern Pennsylvania. She enjoys reading, spending time at the family’s Canadian cottage, gardening, and eating out every time she can manage it.