2007 Conference Presenters Featured Speakers: Terry Kay, Ralph McInerny, Peter Reinhart  Georgia Writers Hall of Fame member Terry Kay will be presenting a Friday workshop and will host the Friday night Writer's Dinner. He was born in Hart County, Georgia, and began his career in journalism in 1959 at the Decatur-DeKalb News, a weekly newspaper in Decatur (GA) and later worked for The Atlanta Journal as a sportswriter and, for eight years, as one of America's leading film-theater critics. His first novel, published in 1976, was The Year the Lights Came On, a story inspired by his memory of the coming of electricity to his rural community.
Kay's signature novel, To Dance With the White Dog, was released in 1990, quickly taking its place among Southern literary classics and establishing Kay as one of the region's foremost writers. In 1993 it was presented as a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie for CBS television, starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. The production earned the highest television rating of the 1993 season, with more than 33 million viewers.
Kay's latest novel, The Valley of Light (Atria Books - an imprint of Simon & Schuster), tells the story of a gifted wandering fisherman following World War II. It won both the 2004 Townsend Award and the Best Fiction Award from the Georgia Writers Association for 2004, and was Kay's third novel to be selected by Hallmark for production.
Kay has been married for 48 years and has four children and eight grandchildren. He currently resides in Athens, Georgia.
 Ralph McInerny will give our keynote address Saturday morning, speaking In Defense of Fiction. He holds degrees from the St.Paul Seminary, University of Minnesota and Laval University. He has taught at the University of Notre Dame since 1955 and since 1978 he has been the Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies. For seven years he was director of the Medieval Institute; since 1979 he has been director of the Jacques Maritain Center. He has published extensively both academically and in the field of fiction. In the first category are Aquinas and Analogy, The Question of Christian Ethics, Aquinas on Human Action and the Penguin Classic, Thomas Aquinas Selected Writing. His biography of Jacques Maritain, The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain has just appeared (2003). He is the author of the Father Dowling mysteries, the most recent of which is Blood Ties (2005), the Andrew Broom mysteries, the Sister Mary Teresa mysteries and a series of mysteries set at the University of Notre Dame, the most recent of which is Irish Gilt (2005).
He has served as president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, The Metaphysical Society, the American Maritain Society and the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He has been visiting professor at nearly a dozen universities and is the recipient of various fellowships, honors and awards, among them the Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement award.. He is a fellow of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. His Gifford Lectures, delivered in Glasgow in 1999-2000, were published under the title Characters in Search of Their Author (2001). He was recently appointed to membership on President Bush’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
 Peter Reinhart is our first Connor Speaker. His address will be The Leaven Factor: Finding Mission and Purpose in Your Writing. As a bread expert, in January, 1996, Peter won the 1996 James Beard Foundation's National Bread Competition for his "Wild Yeast Country Bread," featured in Crust and Crumb. Since then, Peter has spoken extensively on bread as a metaphor in the search for meaningfulness and mission in life, and on the growing artisan bread renaissance. He is also a product developer and has consulted for many food companies including Kraft, Quaker Oats, Kellogg’s, Frito-Lay, and Amy’s Kitchen. His fifth book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, released in November, 2001, was the winner of both the IACP Cook Book of the Year and the James Beard Cook Book of the Year awards, as well as the International Gourmand Award for Best Baking Book in the World. His sixth book was published in November, 2003, American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza. His newest book, Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor, will be published in September, 2007 by Ten Speed Press. Peter Reinhart is the founder of the award winning Brother Juniper's Bakery in Santa Rosa, California and is now the full-time Chef on Assignment at Johnson and Wales University in Charlotte, North Carolina. In addition to being our first Connor Speaker, Peter will be presenting How to Write a Best Selling Cookbook--(class handout) Cookbooks are one of the most popular genres in publishing. In this workshop we will examine what a publisher looks for in a new cookbook and also what the public looks for. These are not always the same thing, but sometimes it all comes together and the book just flat out sells! From concept to proposal to execution, we'll look at them all to help you join the growing ranks of the many successful cookbook authors, as well as the growing sub-genre of food-related story writers. |