Presenters: O-Z
A - G | H - N | O - Z | Features
DAN O’BRIEN
www.wildideabuffalo.com
Dan O'Brien, a writer and buffalo rancher, is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction about the West. He has worked as an endangered-species biologist and an English teacher. His 2001 memoir, Buffalo for the Broken Heart, was selected as the 2009 One Book South Dakota. He lives on his ranch near Hermosa, South Dakota.
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PETER ORNER
Peter Orner's stories have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, McSweeney's, Bomb, The Best American Short Stories, and The Pushcart Prize XXV. He has lived in Namibia and currently teaches writing at San Francisco State University.
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JOHN AND JANE RASMUSSEN
John and Jane Rasmussen are native South Dakotans. Together with Gary Westgard, the Rasmussens present a readers’ theater about the immigrant experience based on an extensive collection of letters exchanged between two brothers, one who emigrated to Dakota Territory in 1876 and the other who stayed in Norway. Pictured at center and on right.
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EDWARD RAVENTON
Edward Raventon, naturalist, outdoor writer and photographer writes non-fiction books and stories about the American West. His first book “Island in the Plains, A Black Hills Natural History” is now considered a classic narrative on the Black Hills. His third book, “Buffalo Country, A Northern Plains Narrative” is the companion volume and recounts the evolution of the American bison on the Northern Great Plains as well as the people who hunted and revered its spirit. During the summer Raventon works as a National Park Ranger. He also regularly contributes free-lance feature/adventure stories written in a casual style for newspapers and outdoor magazines on topics of archaeology, paleontology and natural history. His next book, “Glimpses Across the Rings of Time” will be published soon.
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JIM REESE
www.nyqbooks.org/title/ghoston3rd
Jim Reese is an Associate Professor of English; Director of the Great Plains Writers' Tour at Mount Marty College in Yankton, South Dakota; and Editor-in-Chief of PADDLEFISH. Reese's poetry and prose have been widely published, most recently in New York Quarterly, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, Paterson Literary Review, Louisiana Literature Review, Connecticut Review, and elsewhere. His new book ghost on 3rd (New York Quarterly Books 2010) includes Pushcart Prize nominated poems. Reese has been the National Endowment for the Art’s Writer-in-Residence at the Yankton Federal Prison Camp since 2008.
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MOLLY ROZUM
Molly P. Rozum is an Associate Professor of U.S. history at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. Her Ph.D. is from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and she specializes in the history of the American West, with an emphasis on the Northern Plains. Rozum’s most recent article appears in the edited collection, One Step Over the Line: Toward a History of Women in the North American Wests. Recently, she edited Small-Town Boy, Small-Town Girl: Growing Up in South Dakota, 1920-1950. She grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota.
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SUSAN RUNHOLT
www.susanrunholt.com
Susan Runholt, author of the Kari and Lucas mystery series, shares her teenage heroines' love of art and travel and commitment to feminism. She has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia and Africa, working as a bank clerk and an au pair. She's also been a waitress, a maid, a motel desk clerk, a laundress, a caterer, and director of programming for South Dakota Public Television. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she serves as a fundraising consultant for social service and arts organizations. She was named runner-up for the Debut Dagger Award by the Crime Writers' Association of Great Britain for The Mystery of the Third Lucretia.
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HAMPTON SIDES
A native of Memphis, Hampton Sides is editor-at-large for Outside magazine and the author of the international best-seller, Ghost Soldiers. Ghost Soldiers won the 2002 PEN USA award for non-fiction and the 2002 Discover Award from Barnes & Noble, and his magazine work has been twice nominated for National Magazine Awards for feature writing. Hampton is also the author of Americana and Stomping Grounds. A graduate of Yale with a B.A. in history, he lives in New Mexico with his wife, Anne, and their three sons.
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ANTHONY NEIL SMITH
Born and raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Anthony Neil Smith now lives on the frozen prairies of rural Minnesota where he teaches at Southwest Minnesota State University. He's the author of Yellow Medicine, Psychosomatic, and The Drummer. He's also the editor of the online noir-fiction zine, Plots with Guns.
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CHRISTINE STEWART-NUÑEZ
Christine Stewart-Nuñez, a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Award (2003), is the author of The Love of Unreal Things, Unbound & Branded (Finishing Line Press 2005 and 2006) Postcard on Parchment (ABZ Press 2008), and Keeping Them Alive (forthcoming from WordTech Editions in January). In Postcard on Parchment, winner of the 2007 ABZ Poetry Contest, she weaves travelistic poems of landscape and culture with lyrics that engage the speaker’s experiences living in Turkey. The poems in Keeping Them Alive braid the 1984 death of her sister and the 2006 birth of her son and in doing so explore what dimensions loss brings to life. Stewart-Nuñez received her PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and she currently teaches in the English Department at South Dakota State University.
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KATHRYN TIMPANY
Kathryn Timpany is a native Kansan who has come to love the prairies of South Dakota. She moved to Sioux Falls five years ago to serve First Congregational United Church of Christ as its senior pastor. She writes a weekly online column entitled “Rev It Up” and has published her work in The Mississippi Journal, Word and Witness, Alive Now!, and several small literary journals. Behold is her first book. Kathy enjoys choral music, traveling the blue highways with her spouse, Tim Worthington, and visiting her three small grandsons.
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MARTY TWO BULLS SR.
Marty Two Bulls Sr. is the editorial cartoonist for Indian Country Today, a weekly newspaper on all issues affecting Native America. His gift of line and humor gives the reader an insightful perspective on contemporary topics.
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THRITY UMRIGAR
www.umrigar.com
Thrity Umrigar is the author of the national best-seller, The Space Between Us. A seasoned speaker, she inspires and encourages audiences to write and tell their own stories, and lectures on issues of class, gender differences, immigration, cultural differences, and about how to develop and foster community. Umrigar was born in Bombay, India and came to the U.S. when she was 21. Umrigar had the kind of cosmopolitan childhood that has served her well in her life as a writer. She began publishing short stories, essays, and poems in national magazines and newspapers in India at the age of 15. Umrigar lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
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BETTI VANEPPS-TAYLOR
Betti VanEpps-Taylor is an independent scholar, writer, lecturer, and historian specializing in the multi-cultural history of the Northern Great Plains and the American West. She holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an M.A. in history from the University of South Dakota. She taught history at Wayne State College, Wayne, Nebraska. An Idaho resident since 1998, she enjoys an active life of lecturing, study and working on a new book, entitled Shadow Walker: The Life of Joseph Brown Bear.
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DAVID VOLK
David Volk recently co-wrote the children's book The Mystery of the Maize, published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press. Volk is a five-time state treasurer and served as cabinet secretary of Governor William Janklow. He holds a bachelor's degree in education from Northern State University.
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ALEX WEBB & REBECCA NORRIS WEBB
www.webbnorriswebb.com
Photographers Alex Webb (of Magnum Photos) and Rebecca Norris Webb (a native of South Dakota) are creative partners who often work on books and exhibitions together. Between the two of them, they have published nine books, including most recently their joint book, "Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographs from Cuba, " which was published last fall by Radius Books (with an afterword by Pico Iyer). The couple will have a joint exhibition of the work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from May 2011 to January 2012. Other books by the two of them include Webb's "Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names," with an essay by Orhan Pamuk (Aperture, 2007), and Norris Webb's "The Glass Between Us: Reflections on Urban Creatures" (Channel, 2006). Both of them have exhibited their work widely nationally and internationally.
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GARY WESTGARD
Gary Westgard served as a Lutheran pastor for congregations in Nebraska and South Dkaota for 35 years (1969-2004). In January 2005, Gary began writing poetry and in 2007 he contacted Joe Mierau, owner of Pine Hill Press in sioux Falls, who helped him through the process of self-publishing. Gary's book, The Journey and the Grace, was published in June 2007.
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