Conference Presenters

	Robert Atwan is the Series Editor of The Best American Essays, which he founded in 1985. His essays, criticism, humor, reviews, and poetry have appeared in many professional and literary periodicals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Denver Quarterly, Image, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, River Teeth, Creative Nonfiction, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. The editor of many college and literary anthologies, he has written on a wide variety of subjects, which include the interpretation of dreams in ancient literature, Shakespearean tragedy, and the cultural origins of American advertising. He is currently a visiting professor at Emerson College in its Writing, Literature, and Publishing department.
	Jill Christman’s memoir, Darkroom: A Family Exposure, won the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction and was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2002. Recent essays appearing in River Teeth and Harpur Palate have been honored by Pushcart nominations and her writing has been published in Barrelhouse, Brevity, Descant, Literary Mama, Mississippi Review, Wondertime, and many other journals, magazines, and anthologies. Her work has appeared on Indiana Public Radio and in anthologies, including Writer’s Digest’s Rules of Thumb, Unbuttoned: Women tell the truth about the pains, pleasures and politics of breastfeeding, and Literature: the Human Experience. She is an Associate Professor of English at Ball State University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in creative nonfiction writing in the Creative Writing program and serves as Assistant Chair of Graduate and Undergraduate Programs in the Department of English.
	Bob Cowser, Jr.’s most recent book GREEN FIELDS: Crime, Punishment, and a Boyhood Between (University of New Orleans Press), about the 1979 murder of one of his grade school classmates and the execution of her killer in 2000, won “Best Memoir 2010″ from the Adirondack Center for Writers. Cowser’s first book, DREAM SEASON, published in 2004 by the Atlantic Monthly Press, was a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice” and “Paperback Row” selection and was listed among the Chronicle of Higher Education’s best-ever college sports books. He is also the author of SCOREKEEPING, a collection of coming-of-age essays published in October 2006 by the University of South Carolina Press, and editor of WHY WE’RE HERE: NEW YORK ESSAYISTS ON LIVING UPSTATE, published by Colgate University Press in 2010. Cowser’s work has appeared widely in American literary magazines, including River Teeth, Fourth Genre, The Pinch, the Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, American Literary Review, Sycamore Review, Brevity, Sonora Review and Creative Nonfiction. He is Professor of English at St. Lawrence University, where he teaches courses in nonfiction writing and later American literature, and an Honored Visiting Graduate Faculty Member with Ashland University’s Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts program. He also serves as associate editor of RIVER TEETH: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative.
	Valerie Due is a freelance writer who spent fifteen years in technology marketing after stints as a magazine editor and reporter. She has been awarded fellowships from Writers@Work and Tomales Bay and her work has appeared in publications such as River Teeth, Forbes, Fourth Genre, and U.S. State Department books. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Ashland University, teaches writing online, and is finishing a memoir about growing up on a family farm. She now lives and writes in San Diego with two retired athletes: an ocean lifeguard and a racing greyhound.
	Hope Edelman is the author of five nonfiction books, including the bestsellers Motherless Daughters and The Possibility of Everything, which was recently optioned for film. Her articles, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, Glamour, Child, Real Simple, Writer’s Digest, The Crab Orchard Review, and The Iowa Review. Original work has appeared in several anthologies, including The Bitch in the House, Toddler, Blindsided by a Diaper, and Behind the Bedroom Door. Her work has received a New York Times notable book of the year designation and a Pushcart Prize for creative nonfiction. She teaches in the MFA program at Antioch University-LA, in the Iowa Summer Writing Festival every July, at writing festivals and workshops up and down the West Coast, and through her private writing workshop company, Words Etcetera. Her newest book, a collaboration with the actors Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, is titled Along the Way and is forthcoming in 2012 from Simon and Schuster/Free Press. She lives in Topanga Canyon, California, with her husband and two daughters. http://www.hopeedelman.com
	Walt Harrington Over the years, Mr. Harrington has written benchmark profiles of George H.W. Bush, Jesse Jackson, Jerry Falwell, Lynda Bird Johnson Robb, Carl Bernstein and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, as well as many in-depth articles on ordinary men and women. He is the winner of twenty local, state and national journalism awards, including the Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award for an article that resulted in the return of a kidnapped infant, two National Association of Black Journalists writing awards, Northwestern University’s John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Journalism, three national Sunday magazine writing awards and the Lowell Mellett Award for improving journalism through critical evaluation. Mr. Harrington holds masters degrees in journalism and sociology from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is a journalism professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His e-mail address is: wharring@illinois.edu. was a staff writer for The Washington Post Magazine for nearly 15 years. His book The Everlasting Stream: A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friendship, and Family is the story of what Mr. Harrington, while a city-slicker reporter for The Washington Post, learned during his many years of rabbit hunting outings with his Kentucky country father-in-law and his friends. Reviewers compared the book to the fiction work A River Runs Through It and the nonfiction classic A Sand County Almanac. The book was made into a PBS documentary film that won Mr. Harrington a regional Emmy Award for writing. Mr. Harrington is also the author of Crossings: A White Man’s Journey into Black America, the story of his 25,000-mile excursion through black America. The book was awarded the Gustavus Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in the United States. He is also the author of American Profiles: Somebodies and Nobodies Who Matter and At the Heart of It: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives. His work is included in the prestigious anthologies Literary Journalism and Literary Nonfiction. His book Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life is a guide for journalists wishing to write literary journalism stories about ordinary people.
	Michelle Herman is the author of the novels Missing and Dog, the collection of novellas A New and Glorious Life, the nonfiction book The Middle of Everything: Memoirs of Motherhood, and the Kindle Single Dream Life, a novella-length personal essay. She has just finished a collection of essays (Dream Life and Other Essays) and is at work now on a new novel, Delirious. Other essays and short fiction have appeared in such journals as American Scholar, O, the Oprah Magazine, The Southern Review, StoryQuarterly, Redbook, and–of course–River Teeth, the journal that published the first piece of nonfiction she wrote (and the essay that eventually became her first nonfiction book). Her awards and honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction, a James Michener Fellowship, numerous individual artist’s fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council in both fiction and nonfiction, and two major teaching awards—the University Distinguished Teaching Award and the Rodica Botoman Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring—from Ohio State, where she has taught creative writing since 1988, and where she directs the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in Fine Arts.
	Kate Hopper is the author of Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers (April 2012, Viva Editions) and teaches writing online and at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. Kate holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and has been the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and a Sustainable Arts Grant. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Brevity, Literary Mama, and The New York Times online. She is an editor at Literary Mama. For more information about Kate’s writing and classes, visit www.katehopper.com.
	Sonya Huber is the author of two books of creative nonfiction, Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), finalist for the 2010 Grub Street National Book Prize in Nonfiction, and Opa Nobody (University of Nebraska Press, 2008), shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize. She has also written a textbook, The Backwards Research Guide for Writers: Using Your Life for Reflection, Connection, and Inspiration (Equinox Publishing, forthcoming). Her work has been published in literary journals and magazines including Fourth Genre, Passages North, Hotel Amerika, Crab Orchard Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Washington Post Magazine, in other journals and in many anthologies. She teaches at Fairfield University.
	Dan Lehman is trustees’ distinguished professor of English. He is author of John Reed and the Writing of Revolution (Ohio University Press) and Matters of Fact: Reading Nonfiction over the Edge (Ohio State University Press); co-editor of The River Teeth Reader (University of Nebraska Press) and River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative; and series co-editor of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize series (University of Nebraska Press). In 2004-2005, Lehman was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Stellenbosch University near Cape Town, South Africa, and three years later led a joint Ohio State University/Ashland University study tour to Cape Town. He is working on books about South African nonfiction and film and about the artistic and ethical implications of character formation in nonfiction narratives. A former journalist, Lehman has written for newspapers and magazines in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Charlottesville, Va. He has a Ph.D. in English from The Ohio State University, an M.A. in English from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in English from Eastern Mennonite University.
	Joe Mackall is the author of Plain Secrets: An Outsider among the Amish (Beacon Press, 2007) and The Last Street Before Cleveland: An Accidental Pilgrimage (University of Nebraska Press, 2006). He is the co-founder and co-editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative and co-editor of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize Series (in partnership with the University of Nebraska Press). His articles have been published in a number of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He wrote for The Washington Post for two years. He also served as editor of Cleveland Magazine. His essays have appeared in several anthologies, literary journals, and recently on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of English at Ashland University.
	Dinty W. Moore is author of The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life, as well as the memoir Between Panic & Desire, winner of the Grub Street Nonfiction Book Prize in 2009. He worked briefly as a police reporter, a documentary filmmaker, a modern dancer, a zookeeper, and a Greenwich Village waiter, before deciding he was lousy at all of those jobs and really wanted to write memoir and short stories. Moore has published essays and stories in The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Harpers, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, Gettysburg Review, Utne Reader, and Crazyhorse, among numerous other venues. He is a professor of nonfiction writing at Ohio University.
	Ana Maria Spagna is the author of Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter’s Civil Rights Journey, winner of the 2009 River Teeth literary nonfiction prize and finalist for the 2011 Washington State Book Award, and two collections of essays, Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness and Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw, a Seattle Times Best Book of 2004. Her writing on nature, work, and life in a small community has appeared in dozens of journals including Orion, Utne Reader, North American Review, and High Country News, and in anthologies such as The Face of the Earth and Best Essays NW. She lives and writes in a remote community in the North Cascades accessible only by boat, foot, or float plane, and she teaches creative nonfiction in the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program. www.anamariaspagna.com
	Ellen Stein Burbach joined The Plain Dealer in 1999 as editor of the newspaper's Sunday Magazine. She became assistant managing editor, administration, in 2006, and took on the role of Medical Editor, overseeing a six-member reporting staff, in December of 2008. While editor of the Sunday Magazine, the publication won the 2006 Missouri Lifestyle Journalism award for Best Feature Supplement and its writers were recognized with numerous national, regional and local awards including the 2001 Casey Medal, the 2004 Sigma Delta Chi award for best magazine writing, and 2001 Headliner Awards for feature writing and local interest column. She was Connie Schultz's editor when she won the 2011 APME award for International Perspective from APME for her special report, "Unfinished Business," a story that explored the long-term impact and ongoing story of Agent Orange in the U.S. Before joining The Plain Dealer, Stein Burbach spent 20 years in newspaper and magazine publishing, including serving as the vice president and director of readership development and editorial for Thomson Newspapers and as editor of Ohio and Ohio Week magazines. While at Ohio Magazine, the publication twice won Regional Magazine of the Year, and twice received National Magazine Award nominations: for general excellence in 1984 and public service in 1979. Stein Burbach, a native of Chicago, received her bachelor's degree from Boston University.
	Diane Suchetka began her work at The Plain Dealer in 2004 as a general assignment reporter helping cover, among other things, the 2004 presidential campaign. Three years later, she moved to the paper’s medical team. In June 2008, she received the inaugural MOLLY award for a series of stories on a high school dropout from Cleveland’s inner city who tried to turn his life around by earning a GED. Named for the late columnist Molly Ivins, the MOLLY is given to writers of the best print and online journalism focusing on civil liberties and social justice. In 2009, Diane was a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for a series of stories on a mechanic whose arms were severed and then re-attached after a fire truck he was repairing fell on him. Her work has appeared in Southern Exposure, Good Housekeeping and The Best American Medical Writing 2009. Before working in Cleveland, Diane spent 19 years at the Charlotte Observer. She graduated from Kent State University’s journalism school with a bachelor’s degree in 1979 and a master’s degree in 1988. In her spare time she makes documentary films with a group of friends. Their second movie, “Girlfriends Club,” won Best Ohio Short at the Cleveland International Film Festival last year.
	Sarah M. Wells is the Managing Editor for River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. She is the author of the poetry collection, Pruning Burning Bushes (forthcoming from Wipf and Stock Publishers) and the poetry chapbook, Acquiesce (Finishing Line Press). Essays by Wells have appeared in Ascent and River Teeth, and poems by Wells have appeared in Alimentum, Ascent, Christianity & Literature, JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, Literary Mama, Measure, The New Formalist, New Ohio Review, Nimrod, Poetry East, Rock & Sling, and elsewhere . Wells also serves as the Administrative Director of the Ashland University MFA program and Managing Editor of the Ashland Poetry Press.
	Brie Zeltner started at The Plain Dealer in 2003 with a year-long stint on the medical team. One of the stories she wrote, a narrative piece about a young girl's struggle with epilepsy, won the Epilepsy Foundation's national journalism award that year. Brie returned to the paper in 2007 as a crime reporter working the night shift, and partnered with an investigative journalist to write a series of stories on the FDA's fast track designation. The series won the Ohio Society for Professional Journalists Award for the Best Use of Public Records in 2008. She has been on the newspaper's six-person medical team since 2009, covering cardiology, pediatrics, neurology, and complementary and alternative medicine. Before working at The Plain Dealer, she was a research assistant at Case Western Reserve University, and is the co-author on several scholarly articles, and wrote the chapter introductions to a book on the science of altruism and health. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2001 with a bachelor's in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Environmental Studies.

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