Joanna Topor MacKenzie joined Browne & Miller Literary Associates in 2003 and is now an Associate Agent. Joanna is involved in all aspects of agency business including recruiting potential clients, editing client manuscripts and non-fiction book projects, submitting manuscripts to editors at major New York publishing houses and managing subsidiary rights for the agency (foreign translations and film options). She holds a Master of Arts in Film Theory and Criticism from the University of Chicago. In her spare time, Joanna puts her insatiable love for film and popular culture to use writing screenplays and freelancing for local publications. Her work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, Time Out Chicago, Newcity, Venus, and EGO Magazine, among others.

Close

Lorraine Hawkinson has been official Historian for Wisconsin Regional Writers' Association for many years. This mother of two served three years as Stoughton High School Assistant Librarian, fifteen years as librarian for the Naeseth Library of the Vesterheim Geological Center in Madison, and twenty-seven years as Library Technician for the University of Madison. She also served six years as full time reporter for the Stoughton Courier-Hub newspaper, columnist for the Vesterheim Geological Center, and has had over two hundred articles published as a free-lance writer. She received The Community Appreciation Award from the city of Stoughton, Local History Award from the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Notable Norweigian Award given by Dane County Son's of Norway Lodges. Ms. Hawkinson has been involved in writing two books: History of First Lutheran Church, and History of the Township of Dunn.

Close

Maryo Ewell was formerly associate director of the Colorado Council on the Arts, with a specialty in community development and the arts. She is the founder of the Neighborhood Cultures of Denver, which pairs artists with community organizations in low-income areas of the city; the Arts Education Equity Network, increasing the prominence of the arts in local schools; and a regional folk-arts program in which the state's four folklorists work in a community-development capacity. She has won several national awards for her work in community arts including “Arts Advocate of the Year” in 2004, “Arts Are The Heart” award in 2003, Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Goucher College in 2001, “Seline Roberts Ottum Award” from Americans for the Arts (their highest award for community arts development in 1995), and an award from Rockefeller University to use the Rockefeller Foundation Archives in pursuit of a research project on community arts development in America during the first half of the twentieth century.

She graduated with Honors at Bryn Mawr College, received her MA at Yale University in 1972 for Organizational Behavior, and received an MA at the University of Colorado-Denver for Urban & Regional Planning in 1992. She currently teaches grant writing at Western State College in Gunnison, and is co-teaching the required community arts course in the MA Arts Administration program at Goucher College in Baltimore. She has served on grant panels for many states including the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She currently serves on several boards including the Community Foundation of the Gunnison Valley, the Gunnison Council for the Arts, and the Robert Gard/Wisconsin Idea Foundation, and has been a board member of the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies (now Americans for the Arts). She has written numerous articles; and recently published The Arts in the Small Community 2006, co-authored with Dr. Michael Warlum; and a monograph for Americans for the Arts, “Cultural Torchbearers of the Community: Local Arts Agencies Then And Now.” Ewell is the daughter of grassroots-theater pioneer Robert Gard.

Close

Rosanne Bittner resides in Coloma, Michigan with her husband, Larry. She has had fifty-seven books published since 1983, with roughly ten million books in print over the past twenty-five years. She writes mostly about America's eighteen hundreds Old West and Native Americans and has written for Zebra Books, Bantam Books, Warner Books, Avon, Ballentine, Tor/Forge, and Harlequin's Steeple Hill line.

Rosanne has won numerous writing awards. Her Harlequin inspirational, Where Heaven Begins, took second place in Women Writing the West's prestigious Willa Award, a literary award open to writers from all over the world. Her books have been published in Russian, Taiwanese, Norwegian, German, Italian, and French. Rosanne is a member of Women Writing the West, Western Writers of America, Oregon-California Trail Association, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and North Berrien (Michigan) Historical Societies, Romance Writers of America, Mid-Michigan RWA, and is immediate past president for her local Coloma Lioness Club. She and her husband spend part of the winter in Las Vegas. From there they travel to various western locations for research, as well as traveling west for about a month every summer. They have two grown sons and three grandsons.

Close

A member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and author of the motivational book, The Gifts of Change, Nancy Christie contributes regularly to consumer magazines and informational web sites such as Everyday Health, Smart HomeOwner, Woman's Day, and a variety of Meredith publications. A resident of Ohio, she travels widely presenting workshops on writing and on personal growth.

Visit her at www.nancychristie.com

Close

Ralph E. Sharp III majored in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin, then found employment as a writer and photographer for a series of newspapers, and eventually made the switch from writer to graphic artist and litho-stripper. Advancing to a larger company, Mueller Color Plate, the world's largest Union Color Trade Shop, Ralph had the unique distinction of simultaneously operating both the world's largest four-color separation camera and the world's largest laser film imager.

Having been nicknamed "the Wizard" by his coworkers for his computer skills, Ralph formed his own company, Wizard Information Technology Services, LLC, www.wizardits.com, and has a vast clientele. Ralph designed his first commercial web site and it is still in use today, virtually unchanged.

He has taught a number of courses at the Milwaukee Graphic Arts Institute (MGAI), including Introduction to Desktop Publishing, Introduction to the Internet, Introduction to Web Publishing, and Advanced Web Publishing. He is also web administrator of the Wisconsin Regional Writers' Association, and has maintained their web site, www.wrwa.net, for several years along with producing web sites for many WRWA members. Ralph currently lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and is active in several online forums focusing on Internet design, as well as being the owner/moderator of the GoLiveMod group at Yahoo.groups.com

Close