About the authors
Amid Amidi
CartoonBrew.com
Amid Amidi is an award-winning historian and critic. He is the author of multiple books including Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation (Chronicle Books), and the publisher of Animation Blast magazine. He is also co-founder of the popular animation industry blog Cartoon Brew and the online short film site Cartoon Brew Films.
Levi Asher
LiteraryKicks.com
Levi Asher is the founder and editor of a literary blog, Literary Kicks, and a political blog,
The Cherry Orchard. Other recent online credits include Pearl Jam, Words Without Borders, History Channel, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Asher lives in Queens, New York, has three children and enjoys writing poetry, playing guitar, playing poker and posting to way too many blogs at once.
Meredith Birmingham
Bronte
Family.org
Meredith, taking a page out of Charlotte Bronte's books, has turned to the world of teaching (French, in Cleveland, Ohio). Between grading and planning, she maintains The Bronte Family website, a result of years of Bronte-related excursions, writing, and marvelling at Mr. Rochester's ability to attract readers despite the fact that he locks away his wife. Forgoing the Rochesters of the world, Meredith met her own "good, just, and faithful" Mr. Crimsworth while they were both teaching in France (not quite Belgium, but still...). She looks forward to sharing her love of culture and literature with her students ( and she'll manage to slip Bronte into French class somehow).
Wendy Boswell
About.com
Wendy Boswell is a writer living just outside of Portland, Oregon with her husband, three kids, one large dog, and three cats. She writes about the wonders of the web at About Web Search (part of the New York Times company), does consulting work for a variety of enterprising startups, and for two years scattered the productivity love over at Lifehacker, one of the most popular and well-read blogs on the webernets. On the less technical and non-efficiency-contributing side, you can find Wendy blogging at Snarky Gossip, Gryffindor Gazette, Stewie's Playground, and Hunky Blog. Wendy has just finished her first book titled The About.com Guide to Online Research, and when not zipping around on the Internet's series of tubes loves to go hiking, watch corny sci-fi, and paint.
Alice Bradley
Finslippy.com
Called "laugh-your-lunch-out-your-nose funny" and "absolute hilarity" by its readers, Finslippy has been nominated for several awards, including Funniest Blog (2005 Best of Blogs) and Best Writing of a Weblog (2006 Bloggie Awards) and has been cited by such publications as Redbook and the New York Times. Finslippy has also been the Featured Blog on Typepad. Alice Bradley, the site's creator, is a fiction and comedy writer who has appeared on Bravo.
Christina & M
BrontëBlog
BrontëBlog was born in 2005 when a group of Brontë enthusiasts from all sorts of backgrounds got together in the hopes of finding out just how alive the Brontës were in modern culture. The answer soon came loud and clear: VERY.
Heather Carroll
The Duchess of Devonshire's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century
Born in the wrong century, Heather Carroll is an art historian specializing in British art. On her blog, The Duchess of Devonshire's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century she discusses Georgiana, the 5th Duchess of Devonshire and her inner-circle. Together with Lauren Puzier from Marie Antoinette's Gossip Guide, Heather divulges the most scandalous of information and rumors of the 18th century. When she isn't glued to her blog or her books Heather fulfills her never-ending need to travel.
Seth Cassel
Flamingnet.com
Seth is a seventeen-year-old high school student in Baltimore, Maryland, and a member of the American Library Association (ALA). Along with his father, Seth is co-webmaster of Flamingnet Book Reviews (www.flamingnet.com), a nonprofit website dedicated to promoting reading and featuring student book reviews. Seth was recently the recipient of the Plum Award from DoSomething.org for his work as a social entrepreneur and the Sagebrush Corporation Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) of the ALA. The Sagebrush Award honors a member(s) of YALSA who has developed an outstanding reading or literature program for young adults. When not working on Flamingnet or studying to keep up with a challenging academic schedule, Seth can be found pursuing tennis, robotics, and photography, or just curled up in his favorite chair with a good book.
Tracey Clark
Mother May I
Tracey Clark spends her days juggling a career as a photographer/writer/public speaker with the precarious art of raising both a spirited Kindergartner and a tireless tween. You can find her musing on this balancing act on her blog Mother May I. Tracey offers more 'grown-up' insights on her creative process at the collaborative photography blog she founded at Shutter Sisters.
Diane Danielson
Downtown Women's Club
Diane K. Danielson is the CEO and founder of the Downtown Women's Club (www.DowntownWomensClub.com), a professional network and career website for businesswomen. She is the co-author of The Savvy Gal's Guide to Online Networking (or What Would Jane Austen Do?) (2007) and Table Talk: The Savvy Girl's Alternative to Networking (2003). In addition, she reviews business books for Entrepreneur magazine, and blogs for www.womensDISH.com and the Boston Globe. Diane and her son live by the ocean in Massachusetts where she often ponders "just what would Jane Austen do?"
Natalie Zee Drieu
Coquette
Natalie Zee Drieu is an author, writer, and award-winning web designer based in San Francisco, CA. Her fashion + digital style blog Coquette is rated one of the "Top 50 Fashion Blogs in the U.S." by FashionIQ and covers her love of fashion, style and technology. This year she's teaming up with Diana Eng from Project Runway Season 2 for an upcoming book, TechStyle: Create Wired Wearables and Geeky Gear, coming to bookstores this summer 2008. Natalie is currently Senior Editor for O'Reilly's CRAFT Magazine and also writes daily for the CRAFT blog at craftzine.com.
Robert Duffy
Donewaiting.com
In 2003, Robert Duffy created music blog donewaiting.com in Columbus OH. In 2005 Robert Duffy is the founder of donewaiting.com, a music blog based out of Columbus OH. In 2005 he started micro-record label Sunken Treasure Records. In October 2008 he's getting married.
Jessica Emerson
Austen-tatious
Jessica Emerson (aka "JaneFan") is a technical writer/editor by day and an avid novel reader by night. Recently transplanted from suburban Maryland to the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina, she is a member of the NC chapter of JASNA as well as three local book clubs (and counting!). She depends upon her supportive husband, loving family, and crazy cats to maintain her sanity. Her Jane Austen fan blog, Austen-tatious , has been in existence since 2003.
Mark Frauenfelder
BoingBoing.net
Mark is a writer and illustrator living in Los Angeles, and the editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine. He is the cofounder of the popular Boing Boing weblog (which has won top awards for three years running at the SXSW conference) and was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998.For several years, he wrote a monthly technology column for Playboy magazine and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Popular Science, The Hollywood Reporter, and Business 2.0.
Mark is the author of several books, including The Happy Mutant Handbook (1995, Riverhead) a guide to offbeat pop culture, Mad Professor (2003, Chronicle) a book of bizarre science experiments for kids, World's Worst (2005, Chronicle) a guide to the worst stuff on earth, and The Computer, an illustrated history of computers (2005, Carlton books). He's currently writing a guide to online tricks and tips, called Rule the Web (2007, St. Martins).
His illustrations have appeared in Wired, The Industry Standard, Children's Television Workshop, Turner Cable, and Time Warner.
Anastasia Goodstein
Ypulse.com
Anastasia Goodstein is the founder of Ypulse.com, which provides daily news & commentary about Generation Y for media and marketing professionals and is the author of Totally Wired: What teens and tweens are really doing online (St. Martin's Griffin, 2007).
Jessica Gottlieb
Wife. Writer. Mother. Friend.
Jessica Gottlieb is a social media strategist in Los Angeles. She holds degrees in Kinesiology and in Education. Jessica has spent the last eleven years building businesses and communities online, and is very grateful that her job finally has a name. Jessica is Web 2.0.
Angela Gunn
USA Today Tech Space
Angela Gunn blogs about science, geek culture and technology for USAToday.com at Tech_Space and edits the security channel at Computerworld.com. She's written columns for publications including Yahoo! Internet Life, Seattle Weekly, Computer Shopper, and ZD Internet Magazine, but these days she can't imagine writing for printed publications ever again. (Ironic for someone whose favorite place in the world is the library.) She was born and raised in Nebraska and goes home whenever the border patrol allows it.
David Gutowski
Largeheartedboy.com
David Gutowski is the author and editor of the (mostly) music blog, Largehearted Boy. Publishing from deep in the American South, this web developer shares daily free and legal music downloads; music, literature, and pop culture news; and features that merge music with literature. The blog's Book Notes series has been called a "coveted marketing spot for authors" by the Wall Street Journal, and asks authors to create and discuss a music playlist for their recently published book. Other features include Note Books, which has musicians discuss books, and weekly CD and DVD release lists.
Kristen Hammond
Mommy Needs a Cocktail
Kristen's only claim to Austen fame is the sheer volume of time she has spent either watching Jane Austen adaptations and reading Jane Austen novels. In fact, much of her 20's was spent lying on the couch watching Pride and Prejudice. Which is probably why she didn't get married until she was in her 30's. She doesn't understand why Colin Firth is trying to move beyond his epic performance and she just may have, on occasion, mentioned that he is the only man who could ever persuade her to leave her husband.
When she isn't reading Sense and Sensibility to her 3 year old son, you can find Kristen sharing stories of her half-assed parenting at MommyNeedsaCocktail.com or screen printing smart ass t-shirts in her basement for her online store, Baby Brewing.
Amanda Hirsch
Creative DC
Amanda Hirsch is a writer and performer, and the former editorial director of PBS.org. Her blog, Creative DC, showcases and inspires creative living in the Washington, DC area. She lives in DC with her husband, Jordan, her dog, Cosmo, and the occasional rat. Follow Amanda on Twitter at @amanda_hirsch
Henry Jenkins
Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins
Henry Jenkins is the Co-Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of twelve books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games.
Jenkins writes regularly about media and cultural change at his blog, henryjenkins.org. He is one of the principal investigators for The Education Arcade, a consortium of educators and business leaders working to promote the educational use of computer and video games and of the Knight Center for Future Civic Media, a joint effort with the MIT Media Lab to use new media to enhance how people live in local communities. He is one of the principle investigators for GAMBIT, a lab focused on promoting experimentation through game design, and of Project nml, a MacArthur Foundation funded project that develops curricular materials focused on promoting the social skills and cultural competencies needed to become a full participant in the new media era. Jenkins has a MA in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.Eden M. Kennedy
Fussy.org
Eden M. Kennedy was born and raised on Velveeta and Spam in the suburbs of the American West. She has driven cross-country six times in a Volkswagen. Eden is co-creator of the popular website "Let's Panic About Babies!" She has two Web sites: Fussy, her personal blog, and yogabeans! where she uses her son's actions figures to demonstrate the great primary series of Ashtanga yoga. Her husband believes she could develop her unlimited potential if only she'd disable her e-mail.
Austin Kleon
writer, cartoonist, designer
Austin Kleon is a writer, cartoonist, and designer. He's best known for his Newspaper Blackout Poems--poetry made by redacting words from newspaper articles with a permanent marker. His first book, Newspaper Blackout, is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in April 2010. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Meghan, and their dog, Milo.
Amitava Kumar
author, journalist, professor
Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist born in Ara, Bihar; he grew up in the nearby town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty and delicious mangoes.
He is the author of Husband of a Fanatic. He has also written a book of poems, No Tears for the N.R.I.. The novel Home Products was published in early 2007 by Picador-India. His forthcoming book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, is a writer's report on the global war on terror.
Kumar serves on the editorial board of several publications and co-edits the web-journal Politics and Culture. He is the script-writer and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film, Pure Chutney (1997), and also the more recent Dirty Laundry (2005).
Amitava Kumar is Professor of English at Vassar College.
Heather Laurence
Solitary Elegance and GimletBlog
A sixth-generation Seattleite, Heather Laurence will always be a little wet behind the ears. Her web site Solitary Elegance is best known as a resource for all Northanger Abbey-related radio plays, stage plays, and screenplays. Her own screenplay, Northanger Ranch, received an Honorable Mention at the 2006 Gloria Film Festival. She also maintains her family blog >(GimletBlog) and writes for AustenBlog.
Justin Lindsay
UglyOverload.com
Justin Lindsay has been blogging now for two years. He began with a family blog, which highlighted the antics of his four children, but soon moved on to another passion of his -- the animal kingdom. He graduated from UC Davis with a degree in history, is an accountant by trade, and is an aspiring novelist. He enjoys Northern California, where he spends time with his wife and children.
Laura McDonald
Girlebooks.com
Laura McDonald is a web designer by trade who enjoys long walks on the moors--er--hills of Central Texas. She spends an inordinate amount of time making ebooks by the gals and posts them for free on her website Girlebooks.com. Girlebooks has the lofty aim of making classic and lesser-known works by female writers available to a large audience through the ebook medium.
When not publishing ebooks, she reads and watches adaptations of said ebooks and sometimes scribbles down her opinions.
Kyle MacDonald
Oneredpaperclip.com
Originally from Belcarra, British Columbia, Canada, Kyle MacDonald has planted more than one hundred thousand trees, delivered more than one thousand pizzas, but eaten only one scorpion. He has also traded one red paperclip for a house only once. When he's not stealing a flag from the Prime Minister's office or promoting Alberta Beef by hitch-hiking in a parade, you might find him leaving his wallet in El Segundo or hanging out in Bangkok modeling Italian Soccer jerseys to fund 4am Red-Bull and Rum-fueled urban hitchhikes. He also enjoys writing third-person bio pages for his website and loves to stand on street corners in Montreal hawking shoddily-bound English literature to Francophones in sub-zero temperatures.
His mom still cuts his hair.
Born: October 3, 1979
Merlin Mann
43Folders.com
Merlin Mann is the editor and primary contributor for 43 Folders.
His writing has been featured in popular magazines, including WIRED, Business 2.0, Popular Science, and MacWorld.
Merlin writes and consults on a Macintosh computer in the Parkside District of San Francisco.
43 Folders has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The Economist, The NBC Nightly News, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and many more national and international media outlets.
Of the over 30 million sites currently tracked by Technorati.com, 43 Folders is consistently ranked in the top 100.
Terrie Miller CritterGeek.com
Terrie Miller publishes CritterGeek.com and CitizenSci.com. She lives in Northern California with her husband Steve, dog Laika, cats Buddy and Scout, snakes Ringo and Dash, and lots of bird feeders. In her day job she's the online manager for the Maker Media division of O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Moxie Ask Moxie
Moxie (not her real name) is a mother of two who lives in New York City. Five years ago, she was joking that the sweetest job in the world would be syndicated advice columnist. Now she's an internet advice columnist (instant syndication!) at www.AskMoxie.org helping people deal with how to be parents the way they want to be. When not answering questions about looking at potty training in a meta way, Moxie works for a small software company, picks Lego pieces out of the bottoms of her feet, and watches innumerable episodes of Word Girl and Fetch with Ruff Ruffman.
Laurel Ann Nattress
Austenprose
Laurel Ann is thrilled to be returning for her second contribution to Remotely Connected after blogging about Miss Austen Regrets last year. A life-long acolyte of Jane Austen, on a whim she was inspired to create Austenprose, a blog honoring the brilliance of Jane Austen's writing, and also co-blogs at Jane Austen Today, with Vic (Ms. Place). She delights in introducing neophytes to the charms of Miss Austen's prose as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble, who kindly support her in her passion by allowing her to order far too many Jane Austen books into the store in her attempt to sell them to the most unlikely customers. An expatriate of southern California, she lives near Seattle, Washington where it rains a lot.
Joe Pagetta
JoePagetta.com
A native of Jersey City, NJ, Joe Pagetta currently handles media relations for Nashville Public Television and the Nashville Film Festival. Like many English majors -- he has a B.A. from St. Peter's College -- he's had a diverse working career that has included stints as a sports and news reporter, a retail designer and a music business marketing professional, among other things. Through it all, he's remained a singer-songwriter, writer and a sponge for the arts, notably of the film, music and literature variety. When he's not busy trying to relate with the media, or maintaining the NPT Media Update blog, he posts his essays and blogs on his own web site and accompanying Cultural Sponge Blog at joepagetta.com.
Erica Perl
Author
According to Washingtonian magazine, award-winning children's books author Erica S. Perl is "a writer to watch" (translation: count your silverware after she leaves your house). Her most recent children's book, Ninety-Three in my Family, received the Reuben Award for Best Illustrated Book and was a Book Sense Pick and Slate magazine Best Book of 2006. Erica's children's books blog, Pajamazon, can be found at offsprung.com and at ericaperl.com. When Erica is not writing, she can often be found at elementary schools and libraries, where she gives presentations to children about writing, reading and other bad habits.
Lauren Puzier
Marie Antoinette's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century
Lauren Puzier is an art historian who created and is the author of the history based website, Marie Antoinette's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century. This contemporary, tell-all site, explores the absorbing age of Louis XVI. It focuses on art, architecture, fashion, music, scandals, and our favourite débutantes of the period. The site coincides with the Georgian perspective at Georgiana's Gossip Guide. A history lesson wrapped up in a modern gossip column and tied with satin ribbon, it is easy to get lost in the Gossip Guide's presentation of the fascinating past.
Eric Prescott
AnAnimalFriendlyLife.com
Eric Prescott is the editor and author behind An Animal-Friendly Life, which recently spun off a monthly column for TasteBetter.com. His writing has also been featured in numerous newspapers and magazines, including The Los Angeles Times and VegNews.
An inveterate polymath, Eric occasionally gets out from behind the computer to speak to students and other groups about the benefits of an animal-free diet; to produce, direct and act (sometimes all at once); and to help run film festivals seeking to make the world a better place. A recent transplant to Boston, MA, Eric co-founded and runs the Boston Vegan Association.
Myretta Robens
Republic of Pemberley
Myretta Robens has lived in Regency England since she was old enough to read Jane Austen. Unfortunately, no eligible peers presented themselves and she never could get vouchers for Almacks, so she was forced to make her way in trade.
In 1996, Myretta fell in love with an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and went looking online for others with same malady. She found Amy Bellinger and, together, they built the Republic of Pemberley, a site that has grown to unexpected size and popularity. Myretta still manages it.
Eventually, Myretta decided to try her hand at her own version of the period. Kensington Publishing published Once Upon a Sofa and Just Say Yes in 2005. Her second book was a finalist for The Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA award. In her spare time, Myretta is a technology manager at Harvard University.
Gretchen Rubin
The Happiness Project
Gretchen Rubin is the author of THE HAPPINESS PROJECT--an account of the year she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. On her popular blog, The Happiness Project, she writes about her daily adventures in the pursuit of happiness.
Rubin started out her career in law; she was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal and was clerking for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor when she realized that she really wanted to be a writer.
Her bestselling FORTY WAYS TO LOOK AT WINSTON CHURCHILL and FORTY WAYS TO LOOK AT JFK are brief, unconventional biographies that explore the lives of these two great leaders and, at the same time, examine the limits of biography. POWER MONEY FAME SEX: A USER'S GUIDE is biting social criticism in the form of a user's manual. She also has three terrible novels safely locked in a desk drawer.
Raised in Kansas City, she now lives in New York City with her husband and two young daughters.
Janet Rudolph
Mystery Fanfare
Janet Rudolph is the editor of the Mystery Readers Journal, and creative director/writer at Murder on the Menu and TeamBuilding Unlimited. She blogs daily at Mystery Fanfare and DyingforChocolate.com, facilitates a weekly mystery bookgroup, hosts literary salons with mystery authors, and has been a committee member on numerous mystery conventions. A long time contributor to the mystery genre, she received her Ph.D. in religious mystery fiction. She lives in the Berkeley/Oakland (CA) hills with her husband, a golden retriever, and a Siamese cat. Her websites are: Mystery Readers, Murder on the Menu, Team Building Unlimited and Blogs: Mystery Fanfare and Dying for Chocolate.
Alex Salkever
Hawaiirama.com
Alex Salkever is the founder and editor of Hawaiirama, a travel and events blog covering the Hawaiian Islands. He launched Hawaiirama in the summer of 2006. He's lived in Hawaii since 1994. Alex was formerly a technology editor at BusinessWeek.com. Aside from covering technology, he has written articles for a wide variety of publications including Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure , Wired , Outside , the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and Sunset Magazine. He is also an avid surfer who has ridden waves all over the world and spends as much time as possible in the water.
Victoire Sanborn
Jane Austen's World
Ah, Heathcliff! In Vicʼs second column for Remotely Connected she gives free reign to her feelings about this mesmerizing and dangerous man. Until a few years ago, Vic lived a rather sedate life, reading, painting, traveling the world over, watching movie marathons in her jammies, eating out with friends at exotic restaurants, and spending holidays with her family. In 2006 she surrendered to her passion for all things Regency and Jane Austen, founding a Jane Austen book group with another Janeite and creating two blogs: Jane Austenʼs World and Jane Austen Today (which she oversees with her friend Laurel Ann). In her spare time (three milliseconds per day) she scours the Internet for all things Jane Austen. To put bread and butter on her table, and kibbles in her terrier's food dish, she works as a professional development specialist at a local university to provide nonprofit literacy organizations with technical training. An ardent admirer of Jane Austen since she was fourteen years old, Vic intends to never outgrow her love for the author or for any of the 19th literary classics that have brightened her life these many years. Rebecca Sato
The Daily Galaxy
Rebecca Sato is a science journalist and editor of The Daily Galaxy - News from Planet Earth & Beyond (dailygalaxy.com). Her topics of special interest include an eclectic blend of news and original insights on science, space exploration, climate change, and technology and their reflections in popular culture. Visit dailygalaxy.com for more information.
Donna Schwartz Mills
SoCalMom
Sarah Seltzer
The Egalitarian Bookworm Chick
Sarah Marian Seltzer is a freelance journalist in New York City. She blogs as The Egalitarian Bookworm Chick? about literature and pop culture, with a special emphasis on tv adaptations of literary classics.
Simran Sethi
Treehugger.com
Simran Sethi is a sustainable business contributor to CNBC and the Lacy C. Haynes Visiting Professional Chair at the University of Kansas School of Journalism and Mass Communications, where she teaches courses on environmental communications.
Simran is writing a book on environmental equity for Harper Collins and is the contributing author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, winner of the bronze 2008 Axiom Award for Best Business Ethics book. She is the co-host/ writer of Sundance Channel's environmental programming The Green and the creator of the Sundance web series The Good Fight, highlighting global environmental justice efforts and grassroots activism.
Jonathan Silverman
author, professor, blogger
Jonathan Silverman is completing a manuscript, Nine Choices: Johnny Cash and American Culture, for the University of Massachusetts Press. He is an assistant professor of English at University of Massachusetts Lowell, and he recently served as the Fulbright Roving Scholar in American Studies in Norway. He is the co-founder with Dean Rader of the blog, SemiObama, which examines popular culture images of Barack Obama, and the co-author (also with Dean Rader) of The World is a Text; the third edition, published by Prentice Hall, will appear later this year.
Lori Smith
Jane Austen Quote of the Day
Lori Smith fell in love with Austen when she was in college and happened to pick up a copy of Pride and Prejudice at a used book sale somewhere. She is author of A Walk with Jane Austen, which Publishers Weekly called an "engaging, deeply personal and well-researched travelogue." The book traces her month-long journey following Austen's life and writing through England, exploring themes of love and loss, faith, family and hope, with Jane's story and Lori's woven together. She runs austenquotes.com and followingausten.com (where you'll find excerpts of the book), and writes from her home in Virginia with her sweet, shy black lab named Bess.Margaret Sullivan
AustenBlog.com
Margaret C. Sullivan is the Editrix of AustenBlog, a compendium of Jane Austen and her work in popular culture. She also is the author of The Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World, a guide to everyday life in the world of Jane Austen's novels, and created and helps to maintain Molland's (mollands.net), a resource and community website for fans of Jane Austen and her novels. By day she is a web content coordinator for a large international law firm, and by night she lights candles in front of her shrine to Henry Tilney, who is a very smart beau indeed. Her personal website is Tilneys and Trap-doors.Phillip Torrone
Makezine.com
Phillip Torrone is a New York City based author - he is currently the senior editor for MAKE Magazine, a contributing editor to Popular Science and writer for Howtoons. In his spare time he designs open source electronics and uses high powered laser beams.
Laurie Viera Rigler
janeaustenaddict.com
Laurie Viera Rigler is the best-selling author of the novels CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT and RUDE AWAKENINGS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT (Dutton / Plume). CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT has also been published in the Netherlands (Archipel) and the UK (Bloomsbury), garnering enthusiastic reviews in The Guardian and The Observer and receiving a nomination for a Regency World Award for Best New Fiction. Having spent several years writing her first novel and reading all those proclamations about how aspiring novelists were more likely to win the lottery than ever get published, Laurie is passionate about encouraging other writers to realize their dreams. One of her greatest joys is teaching classes in storytelling technique at Vroman's, Southern California's oldest and largest independent bookstore.
In addition to teaching writing workshops, Laurie blogs for her own site, Jane Austen Addict, and is a frequent guest blogger on various book and culture sites. She has also taken up tweeting Jane Austen's NORTHANGER ABBEY in 140 characters or less, having recently completed a Twitter version of PERSUASION. Perhaps EMMA will be next.
John Watson
flagrantdisregard.com
John Watson is a father of two (a girl and a boy) and is self-employed as a software developer, a writer, and a photographer (in no particular order). He writes honestly and openly about the experiences of raising two young children at his blog flagrantdisregard.com where he has been accused by some readers of inciting a strong desire to have children (read with caution). He is also the photographer and writer behind the educational photography blog photodoto.com and is the creator of fd's Flickr Toys, a very popular collection of fun, free online toys for playing with digital photographs at bighugelabs.com. John lives in the suburbs of Los Angeles with his family.
Simon Winchester
Author
Simon Winchester studied geology at Oxford and has written for Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, and National Geographic. He is the author of A Crack in the Edge of the World, Krakatoa, The Map That Changed the World, The Professor and the Madman, The Fracture Zone, Outposts, Korea, among many other titles. Simon Winchester's most recent book is The Man Who Loved China (HarperCollins). He lives in Massachusetts and in the Western Isles of Scotland.
Molly Wizenberg
Orangette.net
An Oklahoma native, Molly Wizenberg is a food writer and photographer living in Seattle. She publishes food stories and recipes on her blog Orangette, which has been called "downright addictive" by the Chicago Tribune. She is currently writing her first book, to be published in fall 2008 by Simon & Schuster. Her favorite things are grapes, butter, salami, and, at least once a day, a cold glass of milk with some graham crackers and chocolate.
Alexandra Zapruder
Author
Alexandra Zapruder began her career as a member of the founding staff of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. A graduate of Smith College, she served as the researcher for the museum's exhibition for young visitors, Remember The Children, Daniel's Story, and went on to become Assistant Director of the Oral History Department, recording the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. She earned her Master's Degree in Education at Harvard University in 1995 and returned to Washington in 1996 to work on the creation of a traveling version of Remember The Children.
In 1992, Alexandra began researching diaries written by young people during the Holocaust. Ten years later, her work resulted in the publication of Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of the Holocaust, which won the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category. She also served as the guest curator for an exhibition of original young writers' Holocaust diaries, entitled Private Writings, Public Records, which was on view at Holocaust Museum Houston from October 2001 - February 2002. She wrote and co-produced I'm Still Here, a documentary film for young audiences based on Salvaged Pages, which aired on MTV in May 2005. The film was awarded the Jewish Image Award for Best Television Special by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and was nominated for two Emmy awards.
In 2005, as a guest writer and editor for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, she wrote Nazi Ideology and The Holocaust, which was disseminated to teachers and educators across the country. Since then, she has continued to work as a freelance writer for the Holocaust Museum and other clients. At present, she is researching and writing a book for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on the unique relationship between Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters Union, and the State of Israel.
Alexandra is the mother of two young children and attempts to balance the demands of motherhood with her work as a freelance writer and editor. She hopes one day to return to several unfinished writing projects in fiction and non-fiction. She and her family live in Washington, D.C.
