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2013 Presenters
The 2013 Write On The River Conference promises to be our best yet…here’s a look at the fantastic writers and professionals who will be in Wenatchee to inspire, empower and transform your writing! Click here for descriptions of our presenters’ exciting workshops.
Calls for Presenters are now CLOSED for our May 2013 Write On The River Conference. You can apply anytime to be a Presenter at our 2014 Conference, though. Download our Call For Presentations 2014.
J.A. Jance – 2013 Keynote
J.A. Jance is the New York Times bestselling author of the J. P. Beaumont series and the Joanna Brady Series. She has written over 40 novels and has more than 10 million copies of her books in print. Jance is best known for several on-going series centering on the characters of J.P. Beaumont, Joanna Brady and Ali Reynolds. Her latest book is Judgment Call: A Brady Novel of Suspense. An excerpt is available here. Other recent books include Left For Dead and Betrayal of Trust. Jance says of her books: “I come to the task of writing with the understanding that my characters are people first and police officers second. When they get hurt either physically or emotionally, they don’t get over it within the next twenty pages. Things that happen to them in one book impinge on what they’re doing in the next one.” We are thrilled to welcome Ms. Jance to Wenatchee for the kickoff of our annual weekend of learning. Visit her web site at JAJance.com.
Robert Dugoni – Sunday Intensive Workshop Presenter
Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed and New York Times best selling author of the David Sloane series, The Jury Master, Wrongful Death, Bodily Harm, Murder One and The Conviction. He is also the author of the best-selling stand alone novel Damage Control and the nonfiction expose, The Cyanide Canary. Dugoni’s books have been likened to Scott Turow and Nelson DeMille, and he has been hailed as “the undisputed king of the legal thriller” and the “heir to Grisham’s literary throne.” Bodily Harm and Murder One were top five thrillers picks of Library Journal for 2010 and 2011 and Murder One was a finalist for the Harper Lee Award for excellence in legal novel writing.
A two-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Award for fiction, Dugoni graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a degree in journalism and clerked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times before obtaining his doctorate of jurisprudence from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. He has practiced as a civil litigator in San Francisco and Seattle for twenty-five years. He has spoken and taught the craft of writing novels across the United States, Canada and Mexico. His two-day writing seminar for SEAK is generally considered one of the best on the craft of writing novels.
Ray Rhamey – Special Two-Hour Saturday Extended Workshop Presenter
Ray Rhamey is a developmental fiction editor and book designer and an author. He writes the internationally known blog, Flogging the Quill, on creating compelling fiction. Unusually long-lived for a blog—8 years—it receives about 9000 hits a month. On his blog, Ray has critiqued more than 600 first pages of manuscripts submitted by writers; 82% of his readers say they are unpublished and working on a novel. Ray has been editing book-length fiction for about 13 years. His background includes screenwriting and advertising. In screenwriting, Ray was a story editor for Filmation in Los Angeles, and his screen credits include an adaptation of The Little Engine that Could and 20 half-hour screenplays for animated series.
His writing craft book is Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells. His novels include: The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles, a satire/paranormal adventure; We the Enemy, a speculative political thriller; The Summer Boy, a coming-of-age murder mystery set in 1950s Texas; and Finding Magic, a blend of contemporary fantasy and science fiction. You can learn more about Ray at crrreative.com (book editing & design) and at floggingthequill.com (blog).
Pam van Hylckama Vlieg- 2013 Literary Agent
Pam van Hylckama Vlieg lives in the beautiful Bay Area and works for Larsen Pomada Literary Agents. Pam started her career as an agent in April of this year and has already sold twelve books for her clients. She has a list of twelve wonderful clients now and is voraciously seeking to fill holes in her list. Pam especially enjoys fantasy in Middle Grade, high concept in all genres of YA, and Regency or Victorian in Romance. She will hear pitches at our conference for all genres.
Katherine Grace Bond
Katherine Grace Bond is the author of the YA novel The Summer of No Regrets, of the bestselling The Legend of the Valentine, and of Sleepytime Dance. A lifelong educator, Katherine is the creator of TEENWrite, an outdoor live action role-playing and writing community where participants come as their characters. Modeled on the Hero’s Journey, TEENWrite holds quarterly overnights and a four-day summer camp, as well as afternoon novel writing classes during the school year. For summer novel-writing, Katherine created the Teenage Novelist program at Bellevue College, Bellevue, WA. Over the last twenty years, she has taught at writing conferences throughout the United States and in Canada.
Katherine’s poetry and fiction appear in numerous anthologies and journals, including Peculiar Pilgrims: Stories from Left Hand of God, Arabesques, Beyond Magazine, and Margin: An Online Journal of Magical Realism.
For her work-in-progress, an urban fantasy verse-novel, Katherine received a 2012 4Culture Grant, an upcoming writer’s residency at Camac Centre d’Art in Marnay-sur-Seine, France, and a 2010 Jack Straw Writer’s residency. She has a B.A. in Drama from Seattle Pacific University, and has performed with Woodinville Repertory Theatre, Northwest Savoyards and as storyteller for the troupe, DreamWeavers. She lives with her husband and children in Western Washington.
Jason Brick
I came to professional writing after 10 years in business ownership and management, and several years as a business consultant. Since moving to writing full-time, I have applied the tools I used to succeed in traditional business to make (most of) my dreams come true.
For fun, I write young adult and crime fiction, and articles about self defense and travel. For money, I write anything somebody’s willing to pay me for — especially small business advice, personal finance, health and fitness. My first published book was a guide to Astoria, Oregon. You can find my articles in publications like Black Belt Magazine, SohoOS and the Mobile Marketing Blog.
I love to geek out about writing with anybody who’ll listen, so check out my writing blog at www.brickcommajason.com, along with my ebooks 10 Rookie Webpage Mistakes and Your Writing Business Plan. When not writing, I enjoy martial arts, cooking and table-top games. I live in Oregon with my wife, sons and cats.
Jennifer Lauck
Jennifer Lauck is the New York Bestselling author of four memoirs, including Blackbird, Still Waters, Show Me the Way and Found. Her work has been sold in 29 countries and translated into several languages. Jennifer has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, has been on the Rosie O’Donnell show and has been featured in many magazines. Her essays also appear in national magazines and anthologies. She writes about her life as a child, and how both her parents died which left her homeless and at the mercy of uncaring adults. With humor and wisdom, Jennifer looks at her experiences as opportunities to grow and deepen. She has also written several novels and is at work on one right now, which examines traditional forms of healing that rely on nature. Jennifer has an MFA in creative writing from Pacific Lutheran University and has been teaching creative nonfiction and fiction for ten years.
Her web site, jenniferlauckmemoirwriting.com offers hours of free teachings and advice to the budding memoirist because as she likes to say, “your life matters. Write about it.” Jennifer is a member of many writing organizations nationwide and frequently appears on panels and teaches workshops on creative writing techniques. She has two children she is raising at her home in Portland, Oregon. A son, who is fifteen and a daughter who is ten.
Tom Miller Juvik
Tom Miller Juvik is a graduate of the University of Washington writing program. He has been writing for three decades, and is a recipient of the Hackney Literary Award for short fiction, Writer’s Digest Grand Prize, and the PNWA Conference Award for mainstream novel. His stories have appeared in such publications as Glimmer Train, The MacGuffin, Seattle Review, and The Warren Adler Short Story Contest Winners anthology. For a time, he was a Perspectives columnist for The News Tribune, a staff writer for Comedy Central’s Almost Live, and segment producer for The Fox Late Show. He served as a judge for the PNWA story awards, an Artist Trust panelist, and faculty advisor for several student literary magazines. To support his writing habit, Tom teaches high school in Port Orchard, where he earned Washington’s Christa McAuliffe Award for Excellence in Education.
Gary Luke
Gary Luke is the president and publisher of Sasquatch Books, based in Seattle. He has been a book editor since 1980, and authors he has worked with include David Ulin (The Lost Art of Reading), Nancy Pearl (Book Lust), Ray Troll (Something Fishy This Way Comes), Sharon Kramis and Julie Hearn (The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook), Marcella Rosene (Cooking with Les Dames d’Escoffier), Greg Atkinson (West Coast Cooking), Gus Lee (China Boy), Bruce Barcott (The Measure of a Mountain), Shawn Wong (American Knees), Adam Nagourney (Out for Good), Ivan Doig (Bucking the Sun), Jon Winokur (The Traveling Curmudgeon), Art Wolfe (Pacific Northwest, etc.), Lynda Barry (One Hundred Demons), Ketzel Levine (Plant This!), and Craig Childs (The Secret Knowledge of Water). Prior to joining Sasquatch Books, he was an editor for 15 years in New York with Simon & Schuster, Plume/Dutton/Penguin, and Dell/Delacorte. Gary Luke grew up in Seattle and graduated with a BA in English from Western Washington University. He is currently reading This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz.
Karen Fisher-Alaniz
Karen Fisher-Alaniz, an educator, speaker, and freelance writer, turned her sights to writing books when an intriguing story landed in her lap – literally. When her father, a WWII veteran, began having symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, and then gave her 400-pages of letters he wrote during the war, a new journey began. Over the next seven years, through research and hundreds of interviews, an astonishing truth was revealed – one she could never have imagined. The result is her debut memoir, Breaking the Code: a Father’s Secret, a Daughter’s Journey, and the Question That Changed Everything published. Karen and her father were interviewed on NPR’s Weekend Edition with host, Audie Cornish. J.A. Jance wrote, “It’s a story that left me covered with goose bumps time and again and eventually moved me to tears…”
Karen speaks at writer’s conferences, veteran events, libraries, and retirement homes. She regularly leads workshops on nonfiction writing. Whatever the venue, her message is the same; everyone has a story. Known for her hands-on, interactive workshops, she teaches everything from finding the story in your life, to choosing a publishing model that’s right for you. She founded Valley Writers in Walla Walla, WA and teaches memoir writing courses at the local college. She lives in Walla Walla, Washington with her family.
Derek Sheffield
Derek Sheffield’s debut poetry collection, Through the Second Skin, was published by Orchises Press (2013) and was the runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award and a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award.
His poems have also appeared in Poetry, Orion, The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Georgia Review, where they have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in many anthologies including Poem, Revised, Family Matters, and Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology. He has received grants and fellowships from Artist Trust, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Seattle Music and Arts Foundation. He lives with his family in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains near Leavenworth, Washington, and teaches poetry and nature writing at Wenatchee Valley College.
Steven W. White
Steven W. White has written science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels since he was a teenager. In the meantime, he’s been a rocket scientist, a professional stargazer, a Christmas tree farmer, a snake handler, and a high school science teacher. Lately, he’s become a candidate for an MFA in Fiction from the National Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island, Washington. He has also gone indie and published three novels and a collection of short stories electronically.
He is best known for Outrageous Fortunes, which has been called “a journey across the multiverse… every sci-fi nerd’s dream” by Alternate History Weekly Update. His most recent novel, Read No Evil, is a metafictive hybrid text packed with codes and Easter eggs, an ebook about an ebook that drives its readers insane. Steve has been blogging at noveldog.com for four years. On Twitter, he’s @NovelDog.
