Literary Feast 2008 promotes reading and enriches writing skills while generating substantial support for the Broward Public Library Foundation. The Library's children's programs, literacy programs, lifelong learning programs, and cultural programs benefit from the proceeds. Broward County Library is the ninth largest library system in the U.S.

AUTHOR BIOS

Tasha Alexander
Tasha Alexander blends romance and historical mystery in her delightful Victorian-era novels. And Only to Deceive, the just-published A Poisoned Season, and the forthcoming A Fatal Waltz feature Lady Emily Ashton, every inch a lady but one with fondness for port and cigars. A Poisoned Season introduces a presumptive heir to the French throne, robberies, murder and courtship of Lady Emily by a mysterious beau. Alexander attended the University of Notre Dame and lives with her family in Tennessee. She also is the author of the novel Elizabeth, the Golden Age, which is based on the sequel to the Academy Award winning movie, Elizabeth.

Steven Alford and Suzanne Ferriss
Motorcycles have been the symbol of adolescent longing, defiance, middle-aged rebellion, cheap transportation and more. Now popular culture meets academia in a new book, Motorcycle, by Steven E. Alford and Suzanne Ferriss, who teach at Nova Southeastern University. They have been involved in the study of the intersection of motorcycles and culture for a number of years, lecturing on diverse topics such as biker fashion, New Zealand motorcyclists Burt Munro and John Britten, and the psychological effects of riding. Their work has appeared in Harley-Davidson and Philosophy, The Literature of Travel and Exploration, Motorcycle Consumer News, and elsewhere. They also edit the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies.

Gigi Anders
Gigi Anders uses the perspective of the outsider to turn a humorous lens on life. She and her parents were born Jewish in Havana and fled first to Miami Beach and then Washington, D.C. from Castro in 1961. Her memoir was entitled JUBANA!: The Awkwardly True and Dazzling Adventures of a Jewish Cubana Goddess, now in soft cover as is Be Pretty, Get Married, And Always Drink TAB. Her new book, also nonfiction, is about desire, elusive outfits, and the search for love, a sold-out little pink raincoat, and a discontinued Chanel red lipstick: Men May Come and Men May Go, but I've Still Got My Little Pink Raincoat: Life and Love In and Out of My Wardrobe. She has written for Glamour, Allure, Mirabella, American Health for Women, USA Today's USA Weekend, American Journalism Review, Hispanic, Latina and First for Women.

James Brady
James Brady has added to his collection of works on the military with his new volume Why Marines Fight. For more than two centuries, United States Marines have been among the world's fiercest and most admired of warriors. They have fought from the Revolutionary War to Afghanistan and Iraq. But why do Marines fight? Why run toward the guns? Himself a former Marine, Brady interviews combat Marines from wars ranging from World War II to Afghanistan to tell the story of a country at war as seen through the eyes of its warriors. Included are the accounts of Virginia Senator James Webb and his lance corporal son, Jim; New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly; Yankee second baseman (and Marine fighter pilot) Jerry Coleman, and of teachers, firemen, authors, cops, Harvard football players, and just plain grunts. Brady also is a columnist for Parade magazine and Forbes.com.

Terri Cheney
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, manic depression, also known as bipolar disorder, affects more than 5.7 million adult Americans every year. In her new book Manic: A Memoir, Terri Cheney, a former entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles, writes the intimate story of her harrowing, decades-long struggle with this often misunderstood disease. Hollywood, and its movie-making industry of extremes, provides the physical and emotional backdrop for Cheney's memoir. Cheney, who spent seven years writing her book, offers hope that, eventually, the proper medication can be found and 'an uneasy truce with the disease' can be reached.

Amy Cohen
In quick succession, Amy Cohen lost her job writing sitcoms, her boyfriend, and her mom after a long bout with cancer. Filtered through Cohen's worldview, there's comedy in unexpected places. In her engaging memoir, The Late Bloomer's Revolution, she recounts her (seemingly) never-ending search for love, her evolving relationship with her widowed dad, and her own almost unintentional growth. Cohen honed her ironic, wry take on life as a writer/producer on the sitcoms Caroline in the City and Spin City, a dating columnist for the New York Observer, and the dating correspondent for cable TV's New York Central. She lives in New York City.

Lauren Groff
Here's what Stephen King had to say about Lauren Groff's debut novel: "I was sorry to see this rich and wonderful novel come to an end, and there is no higher success than that." Groff graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her short stories will appear in the anthologies Best American Short Stories 2007, Pushcart Prize XXXII, and Best New American Voices 2008. The Monsters of Templeton spans two centuries and tells its story through a panoply of voices, from Templeton ghosts to residents, masters to servants, natives to interlopers, and historical figures to literary characters. Groff lives in Gainesville, Florida with her family.

James Hall
Hell's Bay is the latest installment of James W. Hall's popular mysteries featuring Thorn, his fly-fishing, reluctant investigator who lives in Key Largo. This novel takes Thorn out of his environment to a journey through the wilderness far from civilization but much too close to a killer. Surviving takes all of Thorn's abilities and pushes his creativity to the limit. Hall has been celebrated as the master of Miami noir for his fifteen books, which have been widely translated. Several have been optioned for films. He also is a poet with four titles in print, has published a collection of short stories and a series of essays. He has been a Fulbright professor of literature in Spain and is a professor of literature and writing at Florida International University. He and his wife divide their time between South Florida and North Carolina.

Brendan Halpin
Brendan Halpin's most recent book is the novel, How Ya Like Me Now. Booklist says: "Halpin folds plenty of funny, fresh-mouthed peer banter into this tale of a teen who comes to the end of a years-long nightmare when his widowed mom finally checks into rehab." He has focused on young people and modern culture in his other novels: Long Way Back, Donorboy, and Dear Catastrophe Waitress. He has also written two memoirs, Losing My Faculties: A Teacher's Story and It Takes a Worried Man, a story about how his family coped with his wife's breast cancer. He lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

John Hart
Booklist says John Hart's Down River is "a beautifully constructed story of personal redemption, family secrets, and murder—a small-town epic, if there is such a thing. Hart dexterously juggles a large cast of characters and several intricate plot lines, and when he starts to tie together the threads of the various stories—well, that's when the real magic begins." His first book, King of Lies, was a bestseller. Hart follows a series of lawyer-authors into the mystery genre but with a broader background, including work tending bar in London, repairing helicopters in Alaska, banking and working as a financial advisor. A North Carolina native, he graduated from Davidson College with a degree in French literature, earned a master's degree in accounting from UNC-Chapel Hill and a law degree from the Franklin Pierce Law Center.

Cecil Hayes
Ranked by Architectural Digest as one of the 100 top interior designers worldwide, Cecil Hayes is one of Broward County's own. She received her B.A. degree in art education from Florida A & M University in 1967 and her design degree from The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in 1973. She quickly became the first African-American interior designer to be recognized worldwide. In 2002 she founded The Mikala Collection, her signature luxury furniture line consisting of casegoods (consoles and tables) and upholstery. She has lectured extensively, appeared on numerous television shows, and just completed her second book, The Art of Decorative Details: Creative Ways to Design the Home of Your Dreams, which follows 9 Steps to Beautiful Living: Dream Design, Decorate Your Home With Style.

Stephen Hunter
Stephen Hunter's latest military thriller, The 47th Samurai, brings together two of his frequent protagonists, the father and son duo, Earl and Bob Lee Swagger, featured separately in a number of his books, and spins them into a complex tale of the ancient samurai world and its modern-day dark side. Hunter won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for his trenchant film reviews in The Washington Post and now has an insider's perspective: His novel, Point of Impact was made into the movie Shooter in 2007. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1968 and spent two years in the United States Army. He lives in Columbia, Maryland, with his family.

Chip Kidd
Chip Kidd's The Cheese Monkeys was a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He is associate art director at Alfred A. Knopf, the editor-at-large for Pantheon and the author of Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz, Batman Collected, and others. His second novel, The Learners, appeared in serial form in USA Today and was published this spring. Publishers Weekly described his book jackets as "creepy, striking, sly, smart, unpredictable covers that make readers appreciate books as objects of art as well as literature." The Cheese Monkeys is an academic satire and coming-of-age tale about state college art students who struggle to meet the demands of sadistic art instructors. The Learners builds on that story and Kidd says it is "a murder mystery about a killing that may never have taken place." It draws on Kidd's design experience for the plot and also uses typography as a key element in storytelling.

Ann Liguori
Ann Liguori's book, A Passion for Golf -- Celebrity Musings about the Game collects interviews on the golf course with some of the most successful celebrities in sports, Hollywood, music and business. She narrated and produced the book into an audio book, A Passion for Life, Celebrity Musings from the Fairways. Liguori is the president of her own television production company and owner of the award-winning Sports Innerview with Ann Liguori, a series broadcast throughout the country. The program is the longest-running sports show hosted, owned and produced by a woman. She is one of the original WFAN Radio sports talk show hosts still on the air at the New York station. She has also covered six Olympics as a play-by-play commentator, talk show host, reporter and interviewer.

Alfred McLaren
Alfred S. McLaren's Unknown Waters is a firsthand account of the officers and men of the nuclear-attack submarine USS Queenfish (SSN-651) who at the height of the Cold War explored the dangerous, uncharted, shallow, ice-covered waters of the Siberian continental shelf for the first and only time in history. McLaren commanded the Queenfish for the expedition. A U. S. Naval Academy graduate, he made three Arctic expeditions on nuclear-attack submarines. His military awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, two Legions of Merit and four Navy Unit Citations. Currently a deep-sea explorer and scientist, Captain McLaren completed lengthy dives to R.M.S. Titanic, and one of the first manned dives to the wreck of the German battleship Bismarck.

Christopher Rice
At 28, Christopher Rice is the author of three bestselling novels and a regular columnist for The Advocate magazine. His first novel was published when he was 22 years old. A provocative tale of murder and betrayal among a group of well-to-do adolescents in the New Orleans Garden District, A Density of Souls was compared to the work of writers Brett Easton Ellis and Stephen King and became a New York Times bestseller. Rice followed up with The Snow Garden, a dark tale of infidelity and art history set on a New England college campus. His third book, Light Before Day, set in California, is a dark thriller of revenge and sexual obsession. In 2001, the Hetrick Martin Institute gave him the Emery Award for outstanding contributions made to gay and lesbian youth. He lives in West Hollywood, California, and is a visiting faculty member in the graduate writing program at Otis College of Art and Design.

James Scurlock
James Scurlock attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, studying finance, but left in his senior year without receiving a degree. In 2004 Scurlock created his first documentary, Parents of the Year, which was featured in over 25 film festivals, won numerous awards and was bought by HBO. Scurlock's second short, Stumped!, follows three eccentric citizens who run against Arnold Schwarzenegger for Governor of California. His first feature-length documentary was the critically-acclaimed Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders, which he produced. In conjunction with the global release of the film, Scurlock also wrote a book based on the film, Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders. James Scurlock currently resides in Santa Monica, California.

Kevin Sessums
Kevin Sessums, best known for chronicling the lives of celebrities, has been a contributing editor at Allure and Vanity Fair, where he spent fourteen years. Before joining Vanity Fair, he was executive editor for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. His work has also appeared in Elle, Travel + Leisure, Playboy, POZ, Out, and Show People magazines. Last year, Sessums published a memoir, Mississippi Sissy, about the conflicted life of a self-aware gay youth growing up in Forest, Mississippi, and the wider world of Southern pains, brutality and fascinating characters. His audio recording of Mississippi Sissy was nominated for a 2007 Quill Award. Sessums also has appeared as the character Peter Cipriani in the miniseries adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City.

Jennifer Valoppi
Jennifer Valoppi is a multi-Emmy Award winning journalist who has been recognized four times on the floor of the United States Congress and is a 2006 recipient of Governor Jeb Bush's Points of Light Award, the highest honor in the state. Valoppi's first novel, Certain Cure, a medical/religious thriller, quickly became the #1 bestselling technothriller on Amazon. A veteran news anchor in Miami, New York and Los Angeles, Valoppi has covered almost every major news event of the past 25 years as well as consulting on and appearing in films. As Founder and President of the Women of Tomorrow Mentor & Scholarship Program, Valoppi directs the mentoring of thousands of at-risk young women in South Florida public high schools and has helped provide them with over 1.5 million dollars worth of college scholarships, in the only program of its kind in the country.