Presenters: R-Z
A - F | G - 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.
MICHAEL PERRY AND THE LONG BEDS
www.sneezingcow.com & www.thelongbeds.com
Michael Perry is a humorist and author of several bestselling memoirs and essay collections. Perry has written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, Backpacker, Orion and Salon.com, and is a contributing editor to Men’s Health. The Long Beds are a rotating cast of characters who basically consent to stare at the backside of Michael Perry so he can pretend he's a musician, which he's not. He likes to write songs and sing them, and knows maybe five chords, but he plays his guitar with all the nuance of a man cutting brush. The Long Beds, on the other hand, are real pros. And charitable.
DR. JUDITH PETERSON
www.judithrpetersonphotography.com
In addition to being a practicing physician, Dr. Judith Peterson is a local photographer who specializes in botanical, landscape, sports, medical and fine art photography. Her recently published book, The Picture of Health: A View from the Prairie features her photography and essays by Dr. Rick Holm.
SUSAN POWER
Susan Power is the author of the national bestseller The Grass Dancer. She also released Roofwalker in 2004. She is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and has earned an undergraduate and J.D. from Harvard. Power’s fiction has appeared in Atlantic Monthly and Paris Review.
JIM REESE
Jim Reese is an Assistant 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, Connecticut Review, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. His most recent collection of poetry is These Trespasses (Backwaters Press, 2005, 2006) which includes Pushcart Prize nominated poems. Reese is also the 2008 and 2009 National Endowment for the Art’s Writer-in-Residence at the Yankton Federal Prison Camp.
GARY SCHMIDT
Gary D. Schmidt is the author of more than fifteen books for children and young adults, including The Wednesday Wars, a 2008 Newbery Honor Award winner, and Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, which won a Newbery Honor award and a Michael L. Printz Honor award in 2005. His newest novel, Trouble, came out in spring 2008. He is a professor in the English department at Calvin College and lives on a farm in Alto, Michigan, with his wife and six children.
LINDA SKEERS
www.linda-skeers.com
Linda Skeers is the author of The Impossible Patriotism Project and Tutus Aren't My Style and the collective biography History Makers: TOY MAKERS. Linda is an instructor for the Institute of Children's Literature.
OBERT SKYE
Obert Skye doesn't like to give a lot of details in his biography. For example, he likes to say that he was “born a number of years ago in a town about the size of the one you are living in.” More than wanting to remain anonymous, Skye just wants us to leave the rest of the story to our imagination, something he excels at. He is the author of the bestselling Leven Thumps series. The fifth installment, titled Leven Thumps and the Ruins of Alder, will be released in October 2009.
PAMELA TODD
www.pamelatodd.com
Pamela Todd is the author of Pig and the Shrink and The Blind Faith Hotel, which won the 2009 Green Earth Book Award. She is an avid prairie gardener, a core teaching artist for the Ragdale Foundation, and a popular speaker at schools, conferences, and events. She’s been awarded grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
QUINCY TROUPE
Quincy Troupe is an award-winning poet and the author of of eight volumes of poetry, three children’s books, and six non-fiction works. The first official poet laureate of the State of California, Troupe is professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego. He lives in New York City, where he edits Black Renaissance Noire (to be renamed Baobab), a literary journal published by New York University. His screenplay based on his memoir Miles & Me is scheduled for production Fall 2009, as a major motion picture starring Samuel L. Jackson and Laurence Fishburne.
SUSAN TURNBULL
Susan Turnbull is an award-winning illustrator and artist from Rapid City, South Dakota. She has illustrated numerous books, and her art has been shown in galleries across the country from New York City to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
SIMON VAN BOOY
www.simonvanbooy.com
Simon Van Booy was born in London and grew up in rural Wales and Oxford. After playing football in Kentucky, he lived in Paris and Athens. In 2002 he was awarded an MFA and won the H.R. Hays Poetry Prize. His journalism has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times and the New York Post. Van Booy is the author of The Secret Lives of People in Love, now translated into several languages. He lives in New York City, where he teaches part-time at the School of Visual Arts and at Long Island University.
DAVID VOLK
David Volk recently co-wrote the children’s book The Mystery of the Round Rocks, 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.
KEN WALDMAN
www.kenwaldman.com
Ken Waldman has toured throughout North America as Alaska’s Fiddling Poet since 1995. He is the author of six poetry collections and has released nine CDs. Are You Famous?, his first book of prose, is part memoir, part travel notes, and part artist how-to. A Blue Highways for our time.
DR. KEVIN WEILAND
Dr. Kevin Weiland is a practicing physician,board certified in the specialty of internal medicine. He developed The Dakota Diet as a way to realistically address nutrition and health with his patients. Dr. Weiland has been recognized with numerous awards for his community service as well as his ongoing work with school nutrition and childhood obesity.
GARY WESTGARD
Gary Westgard served as a Lutheran pastor for congregations in Nebraska and South Dakota for 35 years (1969-2004). In January of 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 of 2007.
JERRY WILSON
Jerry Wilson is a writer, former professor of English and journalism, and retired managing editor of South Dakota Magazine. He grew up on a farm in Oklahoma, where he developed his appreciation for nature and the wild. His most recent book, Waiting for Coyote’s Call: An Eco-Memoir from the Missouri River Bluff, centers on his rural Vermillion, South Dakota neighborhood.
DAVID A. WOLFF
David A. Wolff is associate professor of history at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, South Dakota. He is an award-winning author focusing on Black Hills, South Dakota, mining, and western history.