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Mike Cox
A former award-winning newspaper reporter, Cox served as chief of media relations for the Texas Department of Public Safety and later communications manager for the Texas Department of Transportation before retiring in 2007. He left the 8-to-5 world for good in February 2015 to write full time. Elected to the Texas Institute of Letters in 1993, along with James Michener and Bill Moyers, Mike Cox is the best-selling author of more than 30 nonfiction books and hundreds of magazine articles, newspaper columns and essays. Cox’ most-acclaimed works are his two-volume Texas Ranger history, Wearing the Cinco Peso, and Time of the Rangers and a true crime book on professed serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, The Confessions of Henry Lee Lucas. His book with Dean Smith, Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen, won three national awards, including the Will Rogers Medallion in 2014. When not writing or traveling, Cox spends as much time as he can fishing, hunting, prowling antique malls and bookstores and looking for new stories to tell. Now living in the Texas hill country town of Wimberley, Cox's goal is to keep writing at least one book a year until he runs out of ideas or time. |
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Samantha M. Clark
Samantha M Clark is the award-winning author of The Boy, The Boat, And The Beast, Arrow, and American Horse Tales: Hollywood, as well as the Gemstone Dragons chapter book series, just published in August, 2022. She has always loved stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. After all, if four ordinary brothers and sisters can find a magical world at the back of a wardrobe, why can’t she? While she looks for her real-life Narnia, she writes (often in the middle of the night) about other ordinary children and teens who’ve stumbled into a wardrobe of their own. In a past life, Samantha was a photojournalist and managing editor for newspapers and magazines. She lives with her husband and two funny dogs in Austin, Texas. Samantha is the Regional Advisor for the Austin chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, and explores wardrobes every chance she gets. |
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Stephen Yanoff
Stephen G. Yanoff is a former New York insurance company executive who was an acknowledged expert in the field of high-risk insurance. He now writes nonfiction history books and mystery novels, and has won numerous gold and silver medals. Author Of The Graceland Gang, The Pirate Path, Devil's Cove, Ransom On The Rhone, A Run For The Money, and Capone Island (all part of the Adam Gold Mystery Series). Yanoff is the recipient of over 20 prestigious literary awards, and the author of the highly acclaimed non-fiction history books: The Second Mourning (The Untold Story of America's Most Bizarre Political Murder), Turbulent Times (The Remarkable Life of William H. Seward) and Gone Before Glory (The Life and Tragic Death of William McKinley). When asked, “Why write?” Yanoff answers: “My mystery novels are based upon my own experiences in the field of high-risk insurance, and each book involves an actual insurance claim. I decided to write the series in order to share the dark but fascinating side of insurance fraud. My nonfiction books are simply a labor of love—a love of American history.” |
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Sarah Bird
Sarah Bird has received numerous honors and awards: a two-time winner of the TIL’s Best Fiction award; and an Austin Libraries Illumine Award for Excellence in Fiction winner. She was voted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame and has been awarded the Texas Writer of the Year by the Texas Book Festival. In 2017, she won The Austin Chronicle’s Best Fiction Writer award for the sixth time and received the Texas Institute of Letters Lifetime Achievement Award. She is the author of many novels: Alamo House, The Boyfriend School, The Mommy Club, Virgin Of The Rodeo, The Yokota Officers Club, The Flamenco Academy, How Perfect Is That, The Gap Year, Above The East China Sea, A Love Letter To Texas Women, Daughter Of Daughter Of A Queen, and her latest -- Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, set during the Great Depression, focusing on one woman—and a nation—struggling to be reborn from the ashes. Sarah has also been an NPR Moth Radio Hour storyteller, as well as a contributing writer for O: The Oprah Magazine, the New York Times Sunday Magazine and op/ed columns, Chicago Tribune, Real Simple, Mademoiselle, Glamour, Salon, The Daily Beast, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and The Texas Observer. She is a regular columnist for Texas Monthly magazine. |
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S. Kirk Walsh
S. Kirk Walsh is a novelist, an editor, and a teacher based in Austin, Texas. Her debut novel,The Elephant of Belfast, was inspired by true events that took place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during World War II and is a remarkable novel about the unexpected relationship between a woman and an elephant. Over the years, her fiction, essays, and book reviews have been widely published. Each September, Walsh leads a nine-month workshop for fiction writers working on novels and story collections. She is the founder of Austin Bat Cave, a writing & tutoring center for kids which “help young writers to find the power of their voices.” American Short Fiction awarded her an honor of extraordinary service in the literary community in 2018. She has learned to “Walk through the doors that open, but don’t be deterred by the doors that close.” Walsh is now working on a second novel inspired by events that took place in Detroit during the 1930s and 1940s. |