Harold Phifer
Fiction
Harold Phifer was born and raised by a single mom in Columbus, Mississippi. He attended Caldwell High School before graduating from Mississippi State and Jackson State Universities respectively. He built his career as an Air Traffic Controller with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for 23 years. After deciding to leave the comforts of the FAA he started a second career as an International Contractor. This new endeavor led him to numerous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being on foreign soil gave him the needed inspiration to share his past experiences. He proudly label his writings as EXPAT STORIES.
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Julie Potter
Author Nonfiction
Julie Potter is a certified social worker with experience in health care including home care, hospice, nursing home and hospital settings. For 20 years, she coordinated the Sibley Senior Association, a hospital-based wellness program for people 60 and over, and Widowed Persons Outreach, a spousal bereavement program. She was honored to receive two awards from Sibley Hospital for her work, and the Seabury Leadership in Aging Award in 2013. She received her BA from the George Washington University, and her Masters in Social Work from the University of Michigan.
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For more information visit https://www.juliepotterthepowerofgrief.com
Teresa Power
Author
Teresa Power's books have sold over 270,000 copies worldwide. In her roles as an award-winning author, renowned yoga expert, and keynote speaker, her mission is to share strategies and tips to help children, parents, and educators enrich their lives and manage stress. Teresa has been featured by Good Morning America, Parenting, Reader's Digest, Fox 11 LA, Telemundo, and more. She is also the founder of International Kids Yoga Day, which is celebrated globally on the first Friday in April, annually. For more information visit her website at www.abcyogaforkids.com
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Rob Quillen
Non-Fiction, Biographies / Memoirs, Spiritual / Inspirational, True Stories
Rob Quillen started writing for an unofficial Jeff Gordon website and in 2009 wrote for RaceJournalOnline, a feeder website for Jayski.com and ESPN.com. His 9/11 story has appeared in Fields of Thunder: The Story of the Kansas Speedway and Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul. His chance encounter with pilot Jason Dahl, whose plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/11, started the author on a journey of not only self-awareness—but also a quest to fulfill one boy’s dream. With the help of many friends including NASCAR and ESPN, he was able to bring Jason Dahl’s son, Matt, to his first NASCAR race and meet one of his idols, Jeff Gordon. Quillen has been interviewed on The Today Show on NBC, The NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, ABC National Radio Interview, NBC’s Pre-race interview before the 9/29/01 Kansas race as well as several dozen local media interviews on all major networks.
In the months and years following 9/11, he’s been on the lecture circuit giving inspirational speeches on various subjects surrounding 9/11—particularly the message of how you can help others fulfill their dreams. In addition to writing and speaking, he is a board member for The Jason Dahl Scholarship Foundation. This is a foundation created by Sandy Dahl, Jason’s widow to raise money for high school seniors wanting to go to college to obtain their aviation degree. A percent of the proceeds from sales and speaking tour appearances go directly to the foundation. Rob lives with his family in Nebraska.
Melissa Harker Ridenour
Headline Kids, Education, Middle Grade, Non-Fiction
Author Melissa Harker Ridenour is a former teacher, and has mentored students in every facet of their educational development. As a mother and grandmother, she shares concerns with all parents for the safety of children. Melissa’s love of children and her concern for their safety and welfare is the motivating factor behind the development of her book, What Would You Do? A Kid’s Guide to Staying Safe in a World of Strangers.
Melissa offers workshops to schools and other educational institutions or organizations. The workshops reinforce for children, in a fun and creative way, some of the information and strategies presented in What Would You Do? A Kid’s Guide to Staying Safe in a World of Strangers.
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Rick Robinson
Drama, Political Thrillers, Biographies / Memoirs, Humor
With over three decades in law and politics, Rick Robinson’s award winning political thrillers are as current as today’s headlines. Robinson was named 2016 Independent Author of the Year at The Florida Book Festival for Alligator Alley and 2013 Independent Author of the Year with the Grand Prize for Alligator Alley at the Great Southeast Book Festival. For the work on his previous novel, Writ of Mandamus, he garnered the Grand Prize at the London Book Festival and Manifest Destiny won Grand Prize at the DIY Book Festival plus eight additional national and international awards, including Best Fiction at the Paris and New York Book Festivals. It was named one of the year’s best thrillers by USA Book News.
Find Rick’s political and pop culture columns on Rare, the Daily Caller, the River City News, NKY Magazine, Northern Kentucky Tribune and KYForward.
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Sabrina Runyon
West Virginia Authors/Illustrators, Headline Kids, Education, Fiction
A native of Mingo County, WV, Dr. Sabrina Runyon has been an educator for 27 years, and also taught adult basic education and college science courses. She was a principal for eight years and currently Mingo County’s PK-8 director, Title I and Title III director, County events coordinator, and is the lead for a host of other services.
Married with two sons, she worked to get her master’s degree from Salem International University, while working full time at Tug Valley High School and part time at Southern WV Community and Technical College. Dr. Runyon finished her doctoral studies in August of 2016, from Phoenix University. Her first book, Sabrina’s Book, came about as an introductory poem to her fellow doctoral classmates in her first year of residency.
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Dr. Mary J. Ruwart
Author
Dr. Mary J. Ruwart is a research scientist, ethicist, and a libertarian author/activist. She received her B.S. in biochemistry in 1970 and her Ph.D. in Biophysics in 1974 (both from Michigan State University). She subsequently joined the Department of Surgery at St. Louis University and left her Assistant Professorship there to accept a position with The Upjohn Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1976. As a senior research scientist, Dr. Ruwart was involved in developing new therapies for a variety of diseases, including liver cirrhosis and AIDS. Dr. Ruwart left Upjohn in 1995 to devote her time to consulting and writing.
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Lynn Salsi
Non-Fiction, Biographies / Memoirs, Education, Humor, Audio Books, Headline Kids, Education, Fiction
Lynn Salsi, author of 19 books, is the recipient of many writing awards, including an American Library Association Notable Book Award and Historian of the Year. In 2009 she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for The Life and Times of Ray Hicks, Keeper of the Jack Tales. Other awards include the North Carolina Historian of the Year, the Jacqueline Lougheed World Understanding Lecturer (International Alpha Delta Kappa), an American Library Association Notable Book Award, eight Willie Parker Peace History Book Awards, a Stars and Flags gold medal, and a gold medal from the Military Writers Society of America. Lynn is known for retelling ancient tales of America’s first settlers and for her travels to 18 countries to study global stories. For more information visit www.LynnSalsi.com
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NAsir Shansab
Fiction
Nasir Shansab was Afghanistan’s leading industrialist until he was forced to leave in 1975. Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he has returned many times seeking to help the Afghan people.
At the beginning of 1975, Nasir Shansab was worried. As the Afghanistan distributor for Toyota, Mercedes, Michelin, Bosch and others, a major contractor for road construction and maintenance and irrigation projects, his company, Shansab Services, had few rivals in size and scope. However, he had received word that old trumped-up charges from the then-deposed king had been revived following some private statements he had made critical of the new government. Even though Shansab harbored no political ambitions, he was clearly being singled out as threat. He would be arrested within hours, he was told, and could face execution.
Using his contacts within and outside of Afghanistan, Shansab and his family were able to flee the country. He settled in Germany, hoping that the situation would change and allow him to return to Afghanistan, but the Soviet invasion in 1979 made that impossible. He instead came to the United States and was granted political asylum in 1980.
His concern for Afghanistan and its people remained strong.
In 1981, it became clear that a native Afghan resistance had begun and Shansab decided to travel to the region to observe and even advise the Mujahedeen. He continued to make regular journeys to the region for the next seven years. It was on these trips to Pakistan and then the mountains of Afghanistan that Shansab met with and developed relationships with most of the major leaders of the resistance: Hekmatyar, Rabbani, Mojaddidi, Gailani, Sayaf, and others. He even had a breakfast meeting in Pakistan with Osama bin Laden, the Saudi national who was giving money to the resistance. It was at this meeting that Shansab took notice of bin Laden’s arrogance and contempt for the Afghan people.
The rest of the decade was taken up with the cause of Afghan resistance to the Soviet army. Shansab was regularly advising American officials. He and others, including Sen. Orrin Hatch, told the Congressional Task Force on Afghanistan that the Afghan resistance was failing and that their greatest need was advanced weapons to neutralize Soviet air superiority. This, along with many other events, put in motion a change in strategy, culminating in a ceremony at the White House in which a new policy was formally articulated. Shansab was among the assembled guests and reporters when President Reagan signed a commitment that the United States would not just side with the resistance, but actively support the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Around this time, Shansab authored a book, Soviet Expansion in the Third World: Afghanistan a Case Study (Bartleby Press, 1987). The Los Angeles Times called his thesis “simple, if not elegant” and suggested that “his analysis should be understood by everyone above the age of reason.”
It gradually became clear that it was indeed possible for the resistance to drive the Soviet army out of the country. Then, on his trips to the region, a new concern emerged: infighting between the factions. He expressed his misgivings directly to various resistance leaders, urging them to work together. However, they would not even consider the existence of any disharmony. Shansab began warning the West of a coming civil war, arguing that only with intervention from the West could it be avoided.
Unfortunately, his predictions were correct. While war raged in Afghanistan, Shansab focused on his business interests in the U.S., knowing there was little that could be done.
When the Taliban came to power, there was hope that they would bring some stability to the nation. (They had not yet evolved into an uncontrollable, fundamentalist mob and the patrons of al Qaeda.) Shansab advised that the U.S. at least engage the Taliban, although he was not optimistic about the results.
Later, quite unexpectedly, the Taliban government sent two representatives to Virginia with a proposal for Shansab. They would return all property and money that Shansab had owned before the Communists had seized it, if he would come back to Afghanistan and again operate his businesses. He pointed to his visitors’ clothes and beards. Noting that he himself was clean shaven and had always dressed in western-style, he explained that no matter what was promised, if he returned he would soon be forced to adopt their customs. Before they left, one of the men thanked him for his honesty. The other remained silent.
In March 2002, after American forces cleared the Taliban from their strongholds, Shansab traveled to Kabul to see the situation for himself. He immediately saw that he could do some good works. Through his U.S. company Atcatco, LLC and its Afghanistan counterpart, Mirs, Ltd., he began working on major work projects, including energy generation for the World Bank and others. He launched and planned many other commercial ventures as well. He operated in Afghanistan with the principle of zero tolerance for fraud and corruption and endeavored to always use Afghan labor whenever possible.
Though his frustration with the dishonesty among the Afghan leadership led him to return to the U.S. in 2007, Shansab continues to fight for the interests and well-being of the Afghan people. He has consistently called for a different kind of government in Afghanistan, one rooted in freedom and opportunity instead of tribalism and repression. He is now focused on directly improving the lives of the Afghan people through various educational and industrial projects.
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Carter Taylor Seaton
Author
Carter Taylor Seaton is the author of two novels, Father’s Troubles, and amo, amas, amat…an unconventional love story, numerous magazine articles, and several essays, short stories, and the non-fiction, Hippie Homesteaders. Her biography of the late Ken Hechler, The Rebel in the Red Jeep, was released by West Virginia University Press in 2017. Her latest book, Me and MaryAnn is a compilation of stories of her renegade childhood and youth. In her earlier life, she directed a rural craft cooperative, was nominated for the Ladies Home Journal’s “Women of the Year 1975” Award, and ran three marathons—Atlanta, New York City, and Marine Corps—after she was fifty.
The Rebel in the Red Jeep was named a 2017 category finalist for Biography by ForeWord Reviews. Hippie Homesteaders received an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Eric Hoffer Book Awards – Culture Category and was a finalist in the Regional Adult Non-fiction category of ForeWord Magazine’s 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards. Both Hippie Homesteaders and The Rebel in the Red Jeep were non-fiction Weatherford Award finalists, as well. ForeWord Magazine also named her debut novel, Father’s Troubles, as a Book of the Year category finalist in 2003. Her second novel, amo, amas, amat…an unconventional love storywas designated “Indie Approved” by IndieReader.com and they named her one of nine authors nationally who break boundries with Indie Lit.
In 2020 she had two books published: the novel, The Other Morgans (Koehler Publishing) and the memoir We Were Legends in our own Minds(Mountain State Press) written with her husband about his career managing civic centers where he hosted the rock legends of the 1970s and 1980s.
She holds a Tamarack Foundation Fellowship Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts and the West Virginia Library Association honored her with the 2014 WVLA Literary Merit Award. In 2015, Marshall University’s College of Liberal Arts honored her with an Award of Distinction. In 2016, Seaton received the Governors’ Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.
She graduated from Marshall University in 1982 with a Regent's BA degree in English and Business and worked as a marketing professional in West Virginia and Georgia for over thirty years. Now, also a practicing ceramic sculptor, she lives in Huntington, West Virginia with her husband Richard Cobb.
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Grant Maloy Smith
Headline Kids, Holiday
Grant Maloy Smith is a Billboard Top 10 Country/Roots musician who has performed all over the world—from Nashville to London, and even including New York City’s famous Carnegie Hall.
He was inspired to write a song about possums saving Christmas after appearing on the “Tim White Bluegrass Show” in eastern Tennessee. The song led to the book you are holding in your hands right now. An avid artist before he turned to music, Grant enjoyed doing the illustrations, and took great care to bring personality and humor to the characters in the book.
You can download the song for free on Grant’s website at this link:
www.grant-maloy-smith.com/possum
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Roger Smith
Author, CEO
For the first time ever, Roger Smith, the former President and CEO of American Income Life Insurance and Liberty National, takes readers on an unflinching journey through his remarkable life; a life that includes astronomical business success alongside family struggles and a life-threatening battle with addiction.
Written in a fast-paced, no-holds-barred style, The Most Unlikely Leader is a tour-de-force. Why ‘unlikely’? By the time Smith was a teenager he was living on the streets of Santa Monica and addicted to drugs. He dropped out of high school, ran into trouble with the law, had his best friend shot right next to him while running away from a failed robbery attempt and, at one point, was so down and out and desperate for a fix in his early thirties that he walked into the Pacific Ocean expecting never to come back.
While the first third of Smith’s story deals with his life as a functional addict, The Most Unlikely Leader reveals how he got clean, got his mind right, got his career back and ascended to the highest role in a massive corporation. From Smith’s first foray into entrepreneurship as a young boy selling comic books on the streets of New York City, to his first sales job in Compton, California, to his taking over American Income Life, this book shares the philosophy, the decisions (both good and bad) and the grit that resulted in a man without a high school diploma being put in charge of one of the largest life insurance companies in the world.
Oklahoma City. Arkansas. Baltimore. Chicago. Dallas. Washington, D.C. These are just a few of the stops we’ll visit as Smith rose through the ranks of American Income relying on nothing but his wit, work ethic and his evolving understanding of what it takes to build teams and lead national organizations.
Part leadership manual, part business manifesto and part memoir, The Most Unlikely Leader is the rare leadership book you won’t be able to put down.
Amazon Author Page https://amzn.to/3xgpW0a
Millie Snyder
Books, Non-Fiction, Cookbooks
Millie Snyder is an award-winning author, inspirational speaker, and entrepreneur. She has been positively impacting people’s lives for nearly fifty years with her message of healthy living. With her message, she provides the tools for living a longer, healthier life, which produces growth along the way to become the best you possible. To Millie, preparation is the key to success and celebration of life acts as the motivation to live in a health conscious manner.
From September 23, 1969 to July 15, 2013, Millie was the president and CEO of Weight Watchers in West Virginia. In addition to Weight Watchers, she also owns and operates the Shape Shop, a deli-style restaurant, serving healthy, fresh, never-processed foods and treats, catering to all those in pursuit of nutritious fare.
Millie is the mother of two grown children, Craig and Jennifer, and the proud grandmother of five grandchildren, Allison, Jack, Holden, Aubrey and Hunter.
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kelly speck
Author
Kelly Speck once thought she would spend her life as a working mom and wife, hustling in Corporate America while volunteering for the PTA. Life’s numerous curveballs, however, have prompted an evolution; she now considers herself a recovering type-A planner.
For more than twenty years now, she has performed accounting in an array of industries while maintaining a strong marriage to her college sweetheart, Travis. Kelly and Travis have three children who have, along with her deep faith, humbled her profoundly. When her high school friends voted her "Most Likely to Drive a Minivan," she scoffed and declared that would never happen. Ironically, the Specks currently own not one but two minivans. Kelly's favorite of the two has a ramp for her oldest son, Bennett, a quadriplegic, and she considers it the world’s greatest honor to serve as chauffeur for him and his two younger siblings. As she faces work’s daily challenges while remaining a proud wife, mom, and caregiver for Bennett.
Kelly's mantra is: life is not always easy, but it is always beautiful. She lives in Kensington, MD.
For more information visit https://hopeintheheartache.com/
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Joan Spilman
Headline Kids, Fiction
Joan Spilman has an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University where she was awarded the fellowship. She has published in literary journals such as “The Laurel Review,” “Short Story International,” “Willow Springs” and many others. Her awards include the John Maier Award from Marshall University, the George Garrett Prize for Best Prose from West Washington University, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. She is also the author of a YA novel entitled Sansablatt Head which received a five star review from Kirkus and was called “. . . a masterfully weird adventure, likely to leave fantasy lovers in awe.” Joan has owned one duck, Digger, who now resides at the Blenko Glass Factory Pond for retired or ill-tempered ducks.
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Don Stansberry
Fiction, Mysteries, Spiritual, Thrillers, Education, Fiction, Middle Grade
International Award winning author, Don Stansberry, is a native West Virginian and an elementary school teacher. His new book, Vulture Bend, will be released in Boston at NEA, the National Education Association national conference. Don is the author Secret Blood, a multi award winning book that took top honors for best spiritual fiction at the London Book Festival. It was named a Winner at the Indie Book Awards at a reception at The Plaza in New York City during Book Expo America. He also authored two middle school books, Inky & the Missing Gold and Inky, Oglebee, & the Witches, and his children’s book–which he also illustrated, Crusty, was named a Finalist in the USA News Best Book Awards. Don has been a public school teacher since 1984 and always had an interest in writing. He was the head coach for the Parkersburg High Girls’ Basketball team for 16 years and retired from this position with four state championships.
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