Lisa Wingate
Lisa Wingate is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours, which remained on the NYT list for more than two years and has sold over three million copies. She has written more than 30 novels and co-authored the nonfiction Before and After with journalist Judy Christie. Her books have been translated into over forty languages and have appeared on bestseller lists worldwide. Shelterwood (2024) marks her thirty-third release.
Lisa is a Goodreads Choice Award winner, an Oklahoma Book Award finalist, and a Southern Book Prize winner. Americans for More Civility, a kindness watchdog organization, selected Lisa as a recipient of the National Civics Award, which celebrates public figures who work to promote greater kindness and civility in American life. Booklist summed up her work by saying, “Lisa Wingate is, quite simply, a master storyteller.
Lisa Wingate is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours, which remained on the NYT list for more than two years and has sold over three million copies. She has written more than 30 novels and co-authored the nonfiction Before and After with journalist Judy Christie. Her books have been translated into over forty languages and have appeared on bestseller lists worldwide. Shelterwood (2024) marks her thirty-third release.
Lisa is a Goodreads Choice Award winner, an Oklahoma Book Award finalist, and a Southern Book Prize winner. Americans for More Civility, a kindness watchdog organization, selected Lisa as a recipient of the National Civics Award, which celebrates public figures who work to promote greater kindness and civility in American life. Booklist summed up her work by saying, “Lisa Wingate is, quite simply, a master storyteller.
William F. Strong, Ph.D.
William F. Strong, Ph.D.
Dr. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and Professor of Communication with expertise in Intercultural Communication, Communication Law, and Storytelling. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 1985. He previously taught at Texas A&M University, Oregon State University, Texas Southmost College, and the University of Texas Pan American before joining the faculty at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
His courses include the history of Communication Law and Ethics, as well as Great American Oratory. He also teaches a course on the history of Classical Greco-Roman Rhetoric. His research and teaching focused on historical/critical methodologies, especially his work on Mark Twain during the Age of Imperialism.
He has extensive experience as a presenter and radio personality since 2006 and is currently host of “Stories from Texas” on Texas Standard radio. His recent audiobook recordings include The Essential J. Frank Dobie and Remember the Alamo. Dr. Strong is a narrator for Autio and has narrated hundreds of stories converted from the Handbook of Texas.
Kathi Appelt is the author of the Newbery Honor-winning, National Book Award finalist, PEN USA Literary Award-winning, and bestselling The Underneath as well as the National Book Award finalist The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp, and
many, many fun and rollicking picture books.
She is a former member of the faculty at and former chair of the Vermont College’s Master of Fine Arts program in writing for children and young adults. kathiappelt.com
Bret Anthony Johnston
A writer with “a virtuosic gift” (The New York Times Book Review), Bret Anthony Johnston is the internationally bestselling author of Encounters with Unexpected Animals: Stories, the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This, and the multi-award-winning collection Corpus Christi: Stories.
According to The San Francisco Chronicle, “Johnston’s genius lies in weaving a web of optimism around a series of difficult topics,” and Italy’s il manifesto hailed Remember Me Like This as “one of the most intense and engaging [novels] of the new millennium.” Among his many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, the Glasgow Prize, the Jesse H. Jones Award, and The Sunday Times Short Story Award, “the world’s richest and most prestigious prize for a single short story.” His work has been widely translated and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.
After directing the creative writing program at Harvard University for over a decade, he is now the Director of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin where he holds the Mari Sabusawa Regents Chair in Writing.
