Elissa Wall
In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs had forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community and the lengths that Jeffs went to control the women in it. Now, in this courageous memoir, Elissa Wall tells the incredible and inspirational story of her time in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), detailing how she emerged from its confines to help bring one of America's most notorious criminals to justice.
http://childbrides.org/elissa.html
Books by Elissa Wall:
Jean Webster
Jean Webster was an American writer and author of many books including Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy. Wikipedia
Born: July 24, 1876, Fredonia, NY
Died: June 11, 1916, New York City, NY
Movies: Daddy Long Legs, Daddy-Long-Legs
Education: Vassar College, State University of New York at Fredonia
Books by Jean Webster:
Jennifer Weiner
wowed critics and readers with Good in Bed — a savvy debut that took "chick lit" to new heights. Fans fell in love with the heroine, Cannie -- a zaftig entertainment journalist who could give any of the Sex and the City girls a run for their stilettos. When In Her Shoes was adapted into a Hollywood hit, and Goodnight, Nobody hit the bestseller list, Weiner officially transcended One Hit Wonder status.
Link to Jennifer's Website: www.jenniferweiner.com/.
Lauren Weisberger
was born March 28, 1977, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a locale recently made even more chic, if possible, by The Office. She was joined four years later by sister Dana, a.k.a. The Family Favorite, and moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, at age eleven. At Parkland High School, Lauren participated in all sorts of projects, activities, and organizations for the sole purpose of padding her college application, although she did genuinely enjoy playing varsity tennis (especially when the girl who should have played first singles incurred a season-ending injury and Lauren had no choice but to step in for the team).
Once matriculated at Cornell University, all civic-minded extracurriculars fell by the wayside. There, she focused her energy on securing a steady stream of fake IDs and dating boys from the right fraternities. After graduating in 1999 with a BA in English, Lauren moved home for the summer to save money and then traveled all over Europe, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Thailand, India, Nepal, and Hong Kong. She carried a single small backpack and stayed in questionable places, further enriching her authentic cultural experiences by eating only Nutella and drinking Coca-Cola Light.
Lauren's first job after returning to the U.S. and moving to Manhattan was the Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour. Lauren became proficient in the language of stilettos and Starbucks before moving to Departures magazine, where she wrote 100-word reviews by day and took writing classes at night. The Devil Wears Prada, begun at the Writer's Voice, was published in April 2003, and spent six months on The New York Times Bestseller List. It was sold in thirty-one foreign countries and made into a major motion picture by Fox 2000 starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. Lauren has a half-second cameo in the film that even she is hard-pressed to locate after several viewings. Her second novel, Everyone Worth Knowing, was published in October 2005 and is also a New York Times Bestseller.
Link to Lauren Weisberger's Web site: http://www.laurenweisberger.com/.
Rebecca Wells
grew up "in a world that valued storytelling immensely, and where your status in the community was determined not solely by your wealth or profession, but by how good you could tell a tale." Based on that criterion, Wells has already achieved an aristocratic standing among readers who found her Little Altars Everywhere and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood to be life-changing reads.
Link to Rebecca Wells' Web site: http://www.rebeccawells.com/.
Linda White / Regina Duke
has been writing since she was thirteen! Her alter ego is Linda White whose career at University took up a lot of time for thirty years, but she still managed to accumulate a daunting pile of encouraging rejections slips. Is that an oxymoron? Regina and Linda inhabit the same body and do battle daily over what to write next. The family is made complete by two papillons and a tiny Sheltie.
Her Website:
http://reginaduke.com/Home_Page.php
Books by Regina Duke / Linda White:
Jack Whyte
was born and raised in Scotland, and educated in England and France. He migrated to Canada from the UK, in 1967, as a teacher of High School English, but he only taught for a year before starting to work as a professional singer, musician, actor and entertainer—a career he followed, one way and another and with many variations, for the next twenty years.
Whyte's interest in 5th Century history and the 460-year Roman military occupation of Britain springs from his early Classical education in Scotland during the 1950s, and he has pursued his fascination with those times ever since. That interest, allied with an equally fervent preoccupation with the Arthurian legend, led him, in 1978, to a sudden realization of the probable truth underlying the legend's central mystery of the Sword in the Stone. Then, knowing how it had been done, Whyte set out to tell the story, and to establish King Arthur securely in a realistic and feasible historical context. His saga, fleshed out by years of research, continues to unfold to the delight of his large and growing audience. Whyte is married, with five adult children, and lives in British Columbia, Canada.
Link to Jack Whyte's Web site.
Jack Whyte's Novels:
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The Camulod Chronicles
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Susan Wiggs
Using blunt scissors, pages from a Big Chief tablet, a borrowed stapler and a Number Two pencil, Susan Wiggs self-published her first novel at the age of eight. A Book About Some Bad Kids [I still have this-CL] was based on the true-life adventures of Susan and her siblings, and the first printing of one copy was a complete sell-out.
Due to her brother's extreme reaction to that first prodigious effort, Susan went underground with her craft, entertaining her friends and offending her siblings with anonymously-written stories of virtuous sisters and the brothers who torment them. The first romance she ever read was Shanna by the incomparable Kathleen Woodiwiss, which she devoured while slumped behind a college vector analysis textbook. Armed with degrees from SFA and Harvard, and toting a crate of "keeper" books by Woodiwiss, Roberta Gellis, Laurie McBain, Rosemary Rodgers, Jennifer Blake, Bertrice Small and anything with the words "flaming" and "ecstasy" in the title, she became a math teacher, just to prove to the world that she did have a left brain.
Late one night, she finished the book she was reading and was confronted with a reader's worst nightmare—She was wide awake, and there wasn't a thing in the house she wanted to read. Figuring this was the universe's way of taking away her excuses, she picked up a Big Chief tablet and a Number Two pencil, and began writing her novel with the working title, A Book About Some Bad Adults. Actually, that was a bad book about some adults, but Susan persevered, learning her craft the way skydiving is learned—by taking a blind leap and hoping the chute will open.
Her first book was published (without the use of blunt scissors and a stapler) by Zebra in 1987, and since then she has been published by Avon, Tor, HarperCollins, Harlequin, Warner and Mira Books. Unable to completely abandon her beloved teaching profession, Susan is a frequent workshop leader and speaker at writers' conferences, including the literary institution Fields End and the legendary Maui Writers Conference. Her novel The Charm School was voted one of RWA's Favorite Books of the Year. She is the proud recipient of three RITA awards for Lakeside Cottage, Lord of the Night and The Mistress, and is often a finalist for the prestigious award. Her books appear regularly on numerous "Best Of" lists.
Susan enjoys many hobbies, including sitting in the hot tub while talking to her mother on the phone, kickboxing, cleaning the can opener, sculpting with butter and growing her hair. She lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest with her family.
Link to her Web site:
http://www.susanwiggs.com/
Books by Susan Wiggs:
Lisa Wingate
When not busy dreaming up stories, Lisa spends time on the road as a motivational speaker. Via internet, she shares with readers as far away as India, where her book, Tending Roses, has been used to promote women's literacy, and as close to home as Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the county library system has used Tending Roses to help volunteer mentors teach adults to read. Recently, the group Americans for More Civility, a kindness watchdog organization, selected Lisa along with Bill Ford, Camille Cosby, and six others, as recipients of the National Civies Award, which celebrates public figures who work to promote greater kindness and civility in American life.
Books by Lisa Wingate:
Isabel Wolff
 was born in Warwickshire, read English at Cambridge and after spells in the theatre and in advertising, I got a job at the BBC. I had twelve very happy years at BBC World Service radio where I was a producer and reporter in the Features department and in Current Affairs. I travelled widely compiling documentaries in Central America, Australia, Africa and the Far East. I also wrote freelance articles for magazines and newspapers such as The Spectator, the Evening Standard, the Independent and the Daily Telegraph who, in 1997, commissioned me to write a comic, girl-about-town column, Tiffany Trott. Within a month of the first column appearing I'd been signed up by HarperCollins to turn Tiffany's adventures into a book. To my amazement HarperCollins then said they'd like another book, and another, and so somehow, without having set out to be a novelist, here I am.
In my novels self-deception is the main theme. That's why I write in the first person, because I love the fact that my heroine usually doesn't see what's really going on (or is pretending she doesn't) but the reader, gradually, does. So the reader is always one step ahead, seeing through the evident ambivalence of my heroine, or the naked guise. For writing in the first person opens up an ironic gap between what my heroine says and what she clearly feels, or between what she thinks is going on around her and what really is going on. By the end of the novel she either acknowledges, or is forced to face up to, the truth about who she truly is, or what she wants My books are all written with a combination of pathos and humour because that's true to life.
Link to her Web site:
http://www.isabelwolff.com/
Books by Isabel Wolff:
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- Trials of Tiffany Trott
- Rescuing Rose
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- Making of Minty Malone
- Behaving Badly
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Stephanie Zia
Link to her Web site:
http://astorybookworld.blogspot.com/2012/09/interview-with-stephanie-zia.html
Stephanie Zia joined the BBC at 16 and trained and worked as a production assistant, researcher and director on BBC TV arts documentaries. She began writing when she left the BBC to become a full-time mum. She took a beginner’s course in creative writing at Richmond Adult Community College where she later became a guest tutor. Author of 2 Piatkus commercial fiction novels and 2 Hamlyn non-fiction books, Stephanie has written for a variety of British publications. From 2005–11 she was the cleaning guru for The Guardian newspaper’s popular Space Solves column. Embracing the independent publishing revolution, Stephanie started Blackbird Digital Books in January 2010 to produce her first ebook Done & Dusted – The Organic Home On A Budget, her collected Guardian columns. Other titles include Ten Good Reasons To Lie About Your Age, a contemporary novel about a widow torn between ageing gracefully or disgracefully, Babe On Board a comedy about a single 40-year-old first-time mum, and her short story collection Made in China – A Fairy Tale For The Internet Age. She lives in London with her partner and teenage daughter.
Huffington Post Books recommends Stephanie’s novel Ten Good Reasons To Lie About Your Age as an ideal book for reading and book clubs, calling it insightful and delightful, full of thoughtful dialogue and exceptional clarity.
Web Site:
http://astorybookworld.blogspot.com/2012/09/interview-with-stephanie-zia.html
Books by Stephanie Zia:
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