2010

Closing Address: Diane McWhorter is the author of the highly-celebrated book Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, which garnered the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, the Southern Book Award and was named one of Time Magazine’s Top 10 Books of 2001. She is also the author of the award-winning A Dream of Freedom, a young adult history of the Civil Rights Movement. Raised in Birmingham, McWhorter is a graduate of Wellesley College and was a long-time contributor to The New York Times and former editor of Boston Magazine. She is presently on the USA Today Board of Contributors and is currently researching her next book, which focuses on Wernher von Braun and the Third Reich missile pioneers. She and her family live in New York City.

River Jordan is a Southerner with a global perspective. She began her career as a playwright, spending more than 10 years with the Loblolly Theatre Group. She now teaches and speaks around the country on “The Passion of Story” and produces and hosts River Jordan Radio on WFRN Nashville. Her novels include Saints in Limbo, Messenger of Magnolia Street and The Gin Girl. When not traveling the back roads of America, she lives in Nashville with her husband and their Great Pyrenees lap dog.

Todd Johnson is the great-grandson of a rural Baptist preacher. With a degree in history and a master’s degree from Yale Divinity School, Todd moved to New York to pursue a career as a musician. He sang and arranged countless jingles, later playing with artists ranging from Garth Brooks to Natalie Cole and Tony Bennett. A career change led Todd to the theater, where he received a 2006 Tony Award nomination as producer of The Color Purple. The Sweet By and By is his first novel.

Rheta Grimsley Johnson is a Montgomery, Alabama native who studied journalism at Auburn University. She began her reporting career at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, later going on to win the National Headliner Award for newspaper commentary and Scripps Howard’s Ernie Pyle Memorial Award for outstanding human interest reporting. She is the author of America’s Faces and Poor Man’s Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana.

Ad Hudler grew up in a four-generation newspaper family. Following college, he landed a job as a reporter in Fort Myers, Florida. There he met and married his wife, Carol, who soon gave birth to their daughter, Haley. As Carol pursued her dream job as a newspaper publisher, Ad became primary caregiver for Haley. His experiences as a stay-at-home dad led to his first novel, Househusband. He is also the author of Man of the House, All This Belongs to Me and Southern Living.

Masha Hamilton worked as a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in the Middle East for five years, covering the peace process and partial Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. She then spent five years in Moscow covering the collapse of communism, followed by several stints reporting from Afghanistan. The mother of three children, one born in Israel, another in Moscow and the third in the U.S., Hamilton is the author of four novels, including 31 Hours and The Camel Bookmobile.

Marc Fitten was born in Brooklyn, raised in the Bronx and later moved to Atlanta for high school. Following graduation, he spent nearly a decade traveling in Europe, living primarily in Hungary. He is currently the editor of The Chattahoochee Review, Atlanta’s oldest journal. Fitten has been published in several American publications and was included in Esquire magazine’s Cocktail Napkin Project. Valeria’s Last Stand is his debut novel.

Keynote Address: Ridley Pearson is the best-selling author of 25 crime novels. His first ambition, however, was to be a musician, and he spent most of his twenties writing and performing folk rock. His novels include Killer Summer and Killer View, as well as The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, which was made into a made-for television movie. Pearson has also written a dozen novels for younger readers including the Kingdom Keepers series and the Peter and the Starcatchers series (co-written with Dave Barry) which is being developed for the stage by Disney Theatrical. In his free time, he plays bass guitar with the Rock Bottom Remainders, along with authors Greg Iles, Dave Barry, Stephen King, Amy Tan and Mitch Albom.