The Storytellers’ Summit

Speakers

Find out more about the speakers at the Summit.

Ellis Amburn

Ellis Amburn

He began his career in book publishing and edited books by Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut, John LeCarre and others. Now widely respected as a biographer of celebrated entertainers, he is the author of Dark Star (a biography of Roy Orbison) , Subterranean Kerouac, Pearl (a biography of Janis Joplin), Buddy Holly and Jack: The Great Seducer (about Jack Nicholson).
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Liz Balmaseda

Liz Balmaseda

Liz Balmaseda, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, has a gift for breathing human complexity into issues that many see only in black and white. A writer for The Palm Beach Post and former columnist for The Miami Herald, she recently published her first novel, Sweet Mary, a tropical noir. Born in Cuba in 1959, Balmaseda was awarded her first Pulitzer in 1993 for her writings on the plight of Haitian refugees and the Cuban-American population. She shared a second Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for the coverage of the federal raid to seize refugee boy Elián González. That year she was also honored with the Hispanic Heritage Award for writing excellence at the Kennedy Center in Washington. She lives in Miami.
Web site: www.lizbalmaseda.com
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Andrea Billups

Andrea Billups

Andrea Billups is a former national features correspondent for the Washington Times, covering politics and culture. She worked for years as a staff correspondent for People magazine, based in Washington, D.C. and Miami. She, along with co-author Steve Miller of Texas Watchdog, is the author of the Penguin/Berkley book A Slaying in the Suburbs. She is currently a Michigan-based writer and author completing a new work of fiction, Missing in Miami. Her work has appeared in a number of national publications and she has taught at the University of Florida and Michigan State. She describes herself thus: “Truly fabulous babe, retail arbiter, Southern belle with urban soul. Dislikes most things natural. Please underestimate me.”
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Rick Bragg

Rick Bragg

Rick Bragg won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1996 for his work at The New York Times. Born in Piedmont, Alabama, in 1959, Mr. Bragg is the author of three best-selling memoirs, All Over But the Shoutin', Ava's Man and The Prince of Frogtown. Bragg became a domestic correspondent in The New York Times' Atlanta office in October 1994. Before joining The New York Times he worked at several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the St. Petersburg Times, covering murders and unrest in Haiti as a metro reporter, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jonesboro killings, the Susan Smith trial, and more as a national correspondent based in Atlanta. He later became the paper's Miami bureau chief just in time for Elian Gonzalez's arrival and the international controversy surrounding the Cuban boy. He is professor of writing at the University of Alabama.
Web site: www.jn.ua.edu/about/bragg.html
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John Capouya

John Capouya

John Capouya is the author of Gorgeous George (HarperCollins, 2008) and a professor of journalism and non-fiction writing at the University of Tampa. During his journalism career, he worked at Newsweek magazine, The New York Times, SmartMoney magazine and New York Newsday, among other places. Capouya has written for Sports Illustrated, Travel + Leisure and LIFE magazine, and he is a contributor to the St. Petersburg Times.  Gorgeous George, the biography of the flamboyant 1940s wrestling celebrity, is now the basis of both a documentary and a feature film.
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Amy Cherry

Amy Cherry

Amy Cherry, vice president and senior editor at W. W. Norton, has worked primarily with nonfiction. Her main interests are biography, history, and narrative nonfiction. She edited John Matteson's Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography, Lawrence Hill's Commonwealth Winning-novel Someone Knows My Name, and more recently Alice Echols' Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture.
Web site: www.wwnorton.com
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Roy Peter Clark

Roy Peter Clark

By many accounts, Roy Peter Clark is America's writing coach, a teacher devoted to creating a nation of writers. A Google search of his name an astonishing web of influence, not just in the United States, but also around the world. He is a teacher who writes, and a writer who teaches. That combination gives his most recent book, Writing Tools, a special credibility. More credibility comes from Clark's long service at The Poynter Institute. Clark has worked full-time at Poynter since 1979 as director of the writing center, dean of the faculty, senior scholar and vice president.
Web site: www.poynter.org
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Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, before landing at the Los Angeles Times. He became one of the best feature writers in American journalism and began writing novels in the early 1990s. Many of his books feature Harry Bosch, his police-detective protagonist. His novels include The Poet, Blood Work, City of Bones, The Lincoln Lawyer, The Scarecrow and Nine Dragons.
Web site: www.michaelconnelly.com
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Tom Corcoran

Tom Corcoran

Tom Corcoran has been a disc jockey, bartender, AAA travel counselor, U. S. Navy officer, screenwriter, freelance photographer, automotive magazine editor, computer graphic artist, and journalist. He’s written songs with Jimmy Buffett and screen treatments with Hunter S. Thompson. His Key West-based mystery novels include The Mango Opera, Bone Island Mambo, Air Dance Iguana and Hawk Channel Chase. As co-owner of The Ketch & Yawl Press, Corcoran has published twelve South Florida-related books. He has contributed stories to two recent anthologies, Miami Noir and A Merry Band of Murders.
Web site: www.tomcorcoran.net
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Oscar Corral

Oscar Corral

A former reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Newsday and the Miami Herald, Oscar Corral switched careers two years ago and reinvented himself as a visual storyteller. He’s completing a documentary film about Tom Wolfe, whom he has followed during the research and writing of his new novel. Corral will debut a rough cut of the film during the Storytellers’ Summit. Corral won the national championship in writing from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and is the managing partner of Explica Media Solutions in Coral Gables.
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Lane DeGregory

Lane DeGregory

Lane DeGregory won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for her “Girl in the Window” story for the St. Petersburg Times. She prefers writing about people in the shadows. She sweated with a mailman who was mowing strangers' lawns; hung out with a mother who was giving up custody of her adopted son; followed the guy who carries the "THE" flag in a rodeo. She graduated from the University of Virginia, where she was editor-in-chief of the Cavalier Daily student newspaper. She earned a master’s degree in rhetoric and communication studies from the University of Virginia.
Web site: www.tampabay.com
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Tim Dorsey

Tim Dorsey

Tim Dorsey was born in Indiana, moved to Florida at age 1, and grew up in a small town about an hour north of Miami called Riviera Beach. He graduated from Auburn University in 1983 and worked at The Tampa Tribune before beginning his full-time fiction writing career a decade ago. He has published 11 novels, including Florida Roadkill, Atomic Lobster and his latest best-seller, Gator A-Go-Go. He lives in Tampa with his family.
Web site: www.timdorsey.com
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Jane Dystel

Jane Dystel

Jane Dystel has been a literary agent since 1986 and has owned her agency, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, since 1994. Born in Chicago, Dystel grew up in Rye, New York. In her teens, she was an accomplished figure skater. Dystel received her B.A. from New York University and attended Georgetown law school for one year before leaving for her first job in publishing. She has an abiding interest in legal subjects. She is married to Steven Schwinder and has a daughter, Jessica, and a son, Zachary. She lives in New York City with her family and two dachshunds and is a tenacious golfer.
Web site: www.dystel.com
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David Finkel

David Finkel

David Finkel is a staff writer for The Washington Post, and is also the leader of the Post's national reporting team. He won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2006 for a series of stories about U.S.-funded democracy efforts in Yemen. Finkel lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and two daughters. His latest book, The Good Soldiers, was hailed by The New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2008 and his writing about the war has been compared to the brilliant journalism of Ernie Pyle.
Web site: www.thewashingtonpost.com
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Mike Foley

Mike Foley

Mike Foley is a veteran newspaper editor and executive now on the faculty of the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida in Gainesville. He started his journalism career in 1970 as a reporter for the St. Petersburg Evening Independent, an afternoon newspaper that was owned by the St. Petersburg Times. He moved to the Times in 1974 and remained there until retirement in 199, serving as executive editor, managing editor, metropolitan editor and city editor. He also worked on the business side of the paper as vice president of Community Relations. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Florida and was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus of the College of Journalism and Communications and named Teacher of the Year for the College and University.
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Thomas French

Thomas French

Thomas French has spent the past quarter century redefining the possibilities of journalistic storytelling, both in his writing and in his teaching. He earned a degree in journalism from Indiana University and worked for 27 years at the St. Petersburg Times, covering hurricanes and criminal trials and the secret lives of high school students. He specialized in serial narratives, book-length stories published one chapter at a time. In 1998, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and a Sigma Delta Chi award for “Angels & Demons,” a series that chronicled the murder of an Ohio woman and her two teenage daughters as they vacationed in Tampa. His books include A Cry in the Night and South of Heaven. His book Zoo Story will appear in summer 2010.
Web site: www.journalism.indiana.edu
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Carlos Frías

Carlos Frías

Carlos Frías, author of the heart-wrenching memoir Take Me With You, spent his formative years as a journalist traveling the South, primarily as a sports reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This "Southern Fried Cuban" has known the country on an intimate level, painting portraits of America's most recognizable sports figures and reporting on the hotly debated topics in sports. He is a special projects reporter in sports for The Palm Beach Post, and says he is "assembled in America from Cuban parts."
Web site: www.cfrias.com
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Holly Gleason

Holly Gleason

A longtime music journalist whose writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Huffington Post and many other venues, Gleason is also the composer of the much-awarded country song, “Better as a Memory,” which was a huge hit for Kenny Chesney. In addition to journalism, songwriting and music publicity, Gleason maintains a popular Web site called The Yummy List.
Web site: www.theyummylist.com
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Kristin Harmel

Kristin Harmel

Kristin Harmel is a novelist whose books have been translated into numerous languages and are sold all over the world. Cosmopolitan magazine has called her writing "hilarious," and People magazine has referred to her books as "Bridget Jones-esque." A longtime reporter for People magazine (where she specializes now in "Heroes" stories of good people doing good things), is the author of the novels How to Sleep With a Movie Star, The Blonde Theory, The Art of French Kissing and When You Wish. She graduated (Warner Books, Feb. 2006), summa cum laude from the University of Florida, and has lived in Paris, New York, Boston and Miami and now splits time between Orlando and Los Angeles.
Web site: www.kristinharmel.com
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Jeff Klinkenberg

Jeff Klinkenberg

Jeff Klinkenberg is the only two-time winner of the Paul Hansell Distinguished Journalism Award, given to the writer with the best body of work each year by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2007 and 2009, the American Association of Sunday Features Editors selected a body of his work as the best in the nation. A 33-year-veteran of the St. Petersburg Times, he is the author of Blind Dog in a Smokehouse, Dispatches from the Land of Flowers, Real Florida, Seasons of Real Florida and Pilgrim in the Land of Alligators. He is writer in residence for the Florida Studies program at the University of South Florida. “If Jeff Klinkenberg isn’t careful, he might give journalism a good name,’’ author Carl Hiaasen says.
Web site: www.jeffklinkenberg.com
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Melissa Lyttle

Melissa Lyttle

Photojournalist Melissa Lyttle is committed to documenting the lives of people in her community and telling their stories in new and interesting ways. Her work has been recognized by the Pictures of the Year Competition, the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, the Southern Short Course, the Best of Photojournalism and the Alexia Foundation. Once a student of the Eddie Adams Workshop, she has served on the prestigious program’s faculty three times. She is the proprietor of an online communication for photojournalists called APhotoADay. She lives in Tampa and works for the St. Petersburg Times.
Web site: www.melissalyttle.com
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William McKeen

William McKeen

William McKeen is author of nine books, including Outlaw Journalist, his biography of Hunter S. Thompson, Highway 61, a memoir of a 6,000-mile road trip with his son, and Rock and Roll is Here to Stay, a mammoth history of popular music. He’s at work on Paradise Recalled, a collection of stories about growing up in Florida, and Mile Marker Zero, about the state of mind that is Key West. He teaches at the University of Florida and is chairman of its journalism department.
Web site: www.williammckeen.com
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Craig Pittman

Craig Pittman

Craig Pittman in a native Floridian. Born in Pensacola, he graduated from Troy State University in Alabama, where his muckraking work for the student paper prompted an agitated dean to label him "the most destructive force on campus." Since then he has covered a variety of newspaper beats and quite a few natural disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires and the Florida Legislature. Since 1998 he has reported on environmental issues for Florida's largest newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times. In 2004, he won the Waldo Proffitt Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism in Florida for revealing a secret plan by the state's business leaders to transfer water from sleepy North Florida to booming South Florida. The stories caused such an uproar that Gov. Jeb Bush scuttled the plan. Pittman shared the 2006 Waldo Proffitt Award for the series "Vanishing Wetlands" written with colleague Matthew Waite. The series, which found that federal and state wetland protection programs were a sham that enabled development to wipe out swamps and marshes, also won a national award, the Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding Investigative Reporting, from the Society of Environmental Journalists. Pittman and Waite shared a second Proffitt Award and a second Carmody Award in 2007 for a series called "When Dry is Wet" that exposed the flaws in the wetland mitigation banking industry. They turned their research into a book for the University Press of Florida called Paving Paradise: Florida’s Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss. Published in 2009, that book will be released in paperback this spring. Pittman’s second book, titled Manatee Insanity: Inside the War Over Florida's Most Famous Endangered Species, will hit stores in May 2010. He is currently at work on a third non-fiction book.
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Fabiola Santiago

Fabiola Santiago

Fabiola Santiago is the author of Reclaiming Paris, the story of a Miami woman who searches for her lost island and her identity through her relationships with men. The debut novel was published by Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books in September, 2008, and will be re-issued in paperback and in the Spanish-language edition, Siempre París, in August of 2009. Santiago is a features writer at The Miami Herald, where she has worked since 1980. She also is the author of essays, poetry and short fiction.
Web site: www.fabiolasantiago.com
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Ted Spiker

Ted Spiker

Specializing in health and fitness writing, Ted Spiker has become a book-writing machine, authoring some of the best-selling books in the country of the last decade. He is the principal writer behind the You series of books published under the aegis of Dr. Mehmet Oz (You: An Owner’s Manual, You: Staying Young, etc). He also co-authored the books in the Abs Diet series. A graduate of the University of Delaware and Columbia University, Spiker has been teaching at the University of Florida for a decade.
Web site: www.tedspiker.com
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The Storytellers’ Summit

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