Speakers

Gail Collins joined The New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an Op-Ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the Times’s editorial page. In 2007, she began a leave to finish her newest book, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present. She returned to The Times as a columnist in July 2007. Before joining The Times, Gail worked as a columnist and a reporter. She also founded the Connecticut State News Bureau, which provided coverage of the state capitol and Connecticut politics. When she sold it in 1977, the CSNB was the largest news service of its kind in the country. In addition to When Everything Changed, Gail is the author of America's Women, Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics, and The Millennium Book.

A 15-time Emmy-nominated writer Bill Scheft has worked for David Letterman since 1991. BIll is the author of Everything Hurts, a novel published in April 2009, and two previous novels, The Ringer and Time Won't Let Me, which was a finalist for the 2006 Thurber Prize for American Humor. He has also written for the The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire and Sports Illustrated. He lives in New York City with his wife, comedian Adrianne Tolsch. He describes his life as “beyond my wildest dreams or free-floating anxieties” and says the most overused phrase is “Does this look infected?”

W. Bruce Cameron, a best-selling author, award-winning syndicated columnist and frequent guest on television shows, wanted to be a writer since grammar school. As a 16-year old, he sold a short story to the Kansas City Star and was convinced writing was going to be really easy. After college, he got a day job to support his writing habit, getting up at 4:30 a.m. in order to write before going to work. He hit the best-seller list in 2001 with his first book, 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter, and has been called the “Dave Barry of modern family life.”

Loretta LaRoche is an international stress management and humor consultant whose wit and irreverent humor, has, for more than 30 years, raised the humor potential in all of us. She is on the Mass General advisory council for anxiety and depression and was recently inducted into the Friars Club of New York. Loretta writes a weekly newspaper column called, "Get a Life." She is also featured as a stress management expert on www.LLuminari.com, a community wellness Web site, and www.Eons.com, a website celebrating life on the flipside of age 50. She is the author of seven books. Her newest book, Lighten Up, was published in the spring of 2009.

Steve Doocy serves as one of FOX News Channel's co-anchors for its top-rated morning show "FOX & Friends." Before joining FNC in November 1996, he was co-anchor for WCBS-TV's "Early Morning Newscast." Throughout his career, Doocy has received 11 local EMMY Awards for feature coverage, as well as the Associated Press' Feature Reporter of the Year Award. Recently he served as the national spokesman for the March of Dimes' "Walk America" campaign. He is also the author of Tales From the Dad Side: Misadventures in Fatherhood and The New York Times bestseller The Mr. and Mrs. Happy Handbook.

Suzette Martinez-Standring is syndicated with GateHouse News Service. She is the three-time award winning author of The Art of Column Writing: Insider Secrets from Art Buchwald, Dave Barry, Arianna Huffington, Pete Hamill and Other Great Columnists. Suzette is a past president of The National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Formerly certified in hypnotherapy, she applies guided imagery techniques to writing. Visit www.readsuzette.com.

Some two years ago Christian Lander was just another wage slave at a California interactive ad agency, until he launched his hugely popular blog "Stuff White People Like," a tongue-in-cheek comprehensive list of everything left-wing, upper-middle-class Caucasians enjoy. His blog has been featured everywhere from The Atlantic to The New York Times to NPR to Very Short List and blogged about by Kanye West, Bill Simmons, Dave Barry, Comedy Central and Wired. New York magazine's "Approval Matrix" called it "brilliant." The site went on to become a New York Times bestselling book. Lander has appeared on The CBS Early Show, Conan O'Brien and Carson Daly and at SXSW and Comicon.

Thanks to her online marketing, viral marketing, publicity and visibility strategies, Sophfronia Scott has spoken at major events around the country and has been interviewed by prominent media. Her first novel, All I Need to Get By, has been on bestseller lists and under discussion at book clubs across the country. Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. said she is “one of the best writers of her generation.” Earlier in her career, she worked as a researcher at Time and organized the constellation of celebrities at People. Her newest book is Doing Business by the Book: How to Craft a Crowd-Pleasing Book and Attract More Clients and Speaking Engagements Than You Ever Thought Possible.

Tracy Beckerman is the author of Rebel Without a Minivan: Observations of Life in the ‘Burbs and author of a nationally syndicated humor column “Lost in Suburbia.” Her column, she says, is “for any mom who is trying to hold onto just a little bit of her former, cool pre-mom self.” She has been a columnist for seven years and her work is syndicated monthly to 390 newspapers in the Gatehouse Media Chain reaching an audience of 2.5 million readers in 23 states. Before turning to journalism, she was a writer and producer in the television industry for 10 years.

The critically acclaimed author of the memoirs At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream, Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler, and America’s Boy, Wade Rouse is a journalist and essayist whose articles have appeared in numerous regional and national publications. He’s a graduate of Drury University and has a master’s from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. Wade was a contributing writer to the humorous essay collection on working in retail, The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles. The book was featured prominently on NPR and in The Wall Street Journal and includes pieces from a number of noted authors.

Karen Walrond is a writer and photographer in Houston and the author of the upcoming book The Beauty of Different, scheduled for publication from Bright Sky Press in fall 2010. She's also the creative mind behind the very popular blog Chookooloonks, a Web site that helps readers see that their ordinary lives are, in fact, extraordinary. Her fine art images and photography projects have been included in exhibits around the country. She is the author of "Through the Gadling Lens," a weekly column on the travel site Gadling.com, with tips and other information on how to take amazing travel shots. A seasoned public speaker, Karen has spoken on subjects as varied as parenthood, social media and women in leadership, and has appeared on both local and national television shows, including an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Donna Gephart's Donna Gephart's first novel, As If Being 12 ¾ Isn’t Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running for President!, won the prestigious Sid Fleischman Humor Award for the best humorous children’s book of the year. Her new novel, How to Survive Middle School, will be released from Random House April 2010. Donna has been writing and selling humor for over 20 years. Her stories and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including Family Circle, Parenting, Los Angeles Times and Highlights for Children.

Katrina Kittle is the author of Traveling Light, Two Truths & a Lie and The Kindness of Strangers, a BookSense Pick for February 2006 and the fiction winner of the 2006 Great Lakes Book Award. Her fourth novel, Dancing at the Church of St. Equine, will be released from HarperCollins in summer 2010. Katrina has worked as an English and theater teacher, a costumer, a children's theater director and a veterinary assistant, but she is currently thrilled to be writing full time. She recently spent a year voluntarily homeless, traveling as a house-sitting gypsy, with the highlight being four months in a Brooklyn, N.Y., loft. A Dayton native, she's since selected a home in Kettering, Ohio, as home base where she writes with her assistant, Joey the cat.

Danny Gallagher is a humorist, blogger, reporter and writer from Texas. He is a regular contributor to AOL's TVSquad.com, where he contributes daily posts and humorous features and has interviewed several television profiles including the Late Show's Bill Scheft and Sons of Anarchy and Futurama's Katey Sagal. He has also contributed comedy pieces to blogs and web mags such as Asylum.com and Cracked.com and regularly contributes comedy features to the Spike Network's site and has written comedy for stand-ups, magazines and newspapers including the Christian Science Monitor and Chicago Tribune's Red Eye. He can be found on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter and at www.dannygallagher.net.

Nettie Hartsock is a digital strategist and teacher. Nettie works with individuals and companies from all over the world, helping them create and convey their messages to the online world. She prides herself on her diverse base of clients and her customized and unique approach to each client’s needs. Nettie provides training to kick-start e-outreach for companies and individuals and fine-tuning of social media initiatives and presence. Nettie’s clients have seen millions in YouTube views, features on DailyKos, Daily Candy, NYTimes.com, MSNBC.com, Entreprenuer.com, Pink Magazine, Inc.com, Allbusiness.com, The Wall Street Journal, BlogCritics and other leading online sites.

Craig Wilson has been a feature writer at USA TODAY for two decades, writing his popular Wednesday column, “The Final Word,” for the last seven years. He is also the author of It's the Little Things: An Appreciation of Life's Simple Pleasures (Random House). In his column, Craig extols the virtues of the true pleasures in life—clotheslines, freshly cut firewood, sweet corn, and Adirondack chairs—and looks back on his childhood in the country with fondness and an infectious sense of humor. Wilson’s message has struck a nerve, and now he receives hundreds of letters and e-mails each week from readers who share his sense of nostalgia and appreciate his warm, thoughtful observations on daily life.

Terri Nighswonger and her husband, Todd, owners of TNT Publications, purchased Cleveland/Akron Family magazine in the fall of 2002 and began the company with themselves and a small staff. In 2005, the magazine was split into two editions, Cleveland Family and Akron Family. In January 2006, a third edition was added, Lake/Geauga Family. Distributed through more than 1,200 schools, child care centers, libraries, grocery stores, retail outlets and other locations, the publications serve an eight-county area, offering a regional calendar and features on parenting of children from tots to teens. Terri is editor of the growing firm.

An editor and a writer, Terry Whalin understands both sides of the editorial desk. He worked as an editor for “Decision” and “In Other Words.” His magazine articles have appeared in more than 50 publications including Writer’s Digest, The Writer and Christianity Today. Terry is the creator and webmaster for Right-Writing.com and has written more than 60 nonfiction books. For more than 12 years, he was an ECPA Gold Medallion judge in the fiction category. He spent more than five years as an acquisitions editor and is a former literary agent. Terry is now a publisher at Intermedia Publishing Group. His newest book is Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams.

Podcast consultant, coach and instructor, David Jackson has been teaching people technology since 1995. In November of 2005 he launched the School of Podcasting (a site with step-by-step tutorials on how to podcast). This has lead to other podcasting-related sites and services including Podcast Fast Pass (consulting), Podcast Clicks (promotion), Learn to Subscribe (free tutorial for listeners), Podcasting Shirts (clothing), Planning Your Podcast (free tutorials) and Cooler Web sites (design and blog hosting). When he is not podcasting, he is a guitarist in a local Ohio band, is active in his church and is currently working on his bachelor’s degree in education specializing in tech ed at the University of Akron.

After nearly 30 years as a car and truck salesperson, Andrea Langworthy signed up for a writing class at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Walking into that first class, she was certain everyone in the room could see the bright neon sign over her head blinking, "Not a real writer! Does not belong!" Now, a few years later, Andrea writes a weekly newspaper column for the Rosemount Town Pages. Drawing inspiration from her children, grandchildren and parents, she believes every one of life’s moments has the potential to become a column or a story and admits she is not above stealing the words right out of her husband’s mouth.

Dave Glardon is a stand-up comic who has been called a product of the 50s who came of age in the 70s and is still trying to figure out the 90s. Dave is spicy, irreverent and provocative, yet tame enough for the family. Well, most families. Dave entered the world of comedy with his award-winning humor column. Since then his weekly readership has spread to more than 30 countries around the world. Later, he took his humor to the stage and after more than 500 shows, he is a regular headliner and feature performer. He has worked with some of the top names in the industry.

Chuck Sambuchino Chuck Sambuchino is an editor for Writer’s Digest Books (an imprint of F+W Media). He is the editor of two annual resource books: Guide to Literary Agents and Screenwriter’s & Playwright’s Market. He also assists in editing Writer’s Market. He recently helmed the third edition of Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript (a WD trade book). He has a forthcoming humor book with Ten Speed Press / Random House, due out in Fall 2010. Chuck is also a writer, freelance editor and produced playwright, with both original and commissioned works produced. As a magazine freelancer, his articles have appeared in Watercolor Artist, Pennsylvania Magazine, Cincinnati Magazine and New Mexico Magazine. In the last decade, more than 500 of his articles have appeared in newspapers, magazines and books.

Jerry Zezima is listed next-to-last on this page in honor of his lifelong commitment to having a last name that begins with "Z." He writes a column for his hometown newspaper, The Stamford Advocate in Connecticut. His column is a standing feature in the Los Angeles Times – Washington Post News Service and has run in newspapers across the country and around the world. He has also written for magazines such as Reader’s Digest and Family Circle and has extensive radio and television experience. A popular public speaker who lives on Long Island, he has performed stand-up acts at comedy clubs in Manhattan and is writing a book of nonfiction family humor. He has a wife, two daughters, a dog and four cats and says he has no interesting hobbies.

Matthew Dewald is the director of the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop at the University of Dayton. A professional editor and writer for more than a decade, he has edited projects as varied as humor collections, elementary school social studies textbooks and refrigerator repair manuals. He finds them all equally funny. Since 2002, he has been on staff as an editor in the communications office at UD, Erma Bombeck's alma mater, and is currently managing editor of University of Dayton Magazine. His older son, Max, is a proud alumnus of the Bombeck Family Learning Center on UD's campus.