Authors Café Bios

Sarah Sullivan

Sarah Sullivan’s debut novel for young readers, All That’s Missing, will be published by Candlewick Press on Oct. 8, 2013. Her most recent picture book, Passing the Music Down, illustrated by Barry Root, was a 2012 N.C.T.E. Notable Children’s Book in the Language Arts, a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of 2011 and a nominee for the West Virginia Children’s Choice Book Award. Kirkus called it “a lovely, resonant offering.” Sarah is the author of three additional picture books, including Once Upon a Baby Brother, a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of 2010. Dear Baby: Letters from Your Big Brother was an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Award winner. A graduate of Tufts University and WVU College of Law, Sarah holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College, where she was a winner of the Harcourt Post-Graduate Scholarship. She is also the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship/Grant from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts. She and her husband live in Charleston, WV. [email protected] http://sarahsullivanjournal.blogspot.com www.sarahsullivanbooks.com

William Trent Pancoast

William Trent Pancoast shared the following: “I consider myself a West Virginia writer even though I have never lived in the Mountaineer State. My mother grew up in Charleston and went to Ohio University where she graduated in 1943. During the war, she taught up one of the hollers near Charleston while my dad was overseas. After the war they settled in Ohio, and all during my childhood we were frequent visitors at my grandmother's house on Washington Street East. She loved to explore, and by the time I was 20 I was enlisted to take her down to the old homestead in Vulcan, south of Matewan. My story Hill Tide, first published in 1976, came out of that trip. To make this long story short, my grandmother (Counts was her married name, Trent her maiden name. The Trent family is mentioned in most of the Hatfield--McCoy histories) is the person who brought about my great love of the beautiful and wild state of West Virginia. “Both my novels, Crashing and Wildcat, and most of my stories have West Virginia square in the middle one way or another. Often the characters are factory worker immigrants to Ohio. In my 2010 novel Wildcat, many of the principal characters are from West Virginia.” Pancoast is retired from the auto industry after thirty years as a die maker and union newspaper editor. Born in 1949, the author lives in Ontario, Ohio. He has a BA in English from the Ohio State University. [email protected] Clifford Garstang

Clifford Garstang is the author of the prize-winning short story collection In an Uncharted Country (Press 53, 2009) and the novel in stories What the Zhang Boys Know (Press 53, 2012), which has been named a finalist for the 2013 Library of Virginia Award. About Garstang’s first book, Tim O’Brien, author of The Things they Carried, said, “In an Uncharted Country is an impeccably written, sumptuously imagined, and completely enchanting book of stories. . .” John Casey, author of Spartina, called What the Zhang Boys Know “a wonderful and haunting book.” Garstang’s work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Blackbird, Cream City Review, Los Angeles Review, Shenandoah, Tampa Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere, and has received Distinguished Mention in the Best American Series. He won the 2006 Confluence Fiction Prize and the 2007 GSU Review Fiction Prize and has been awarded fellowships by the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He holds an MFA in Fiction from Queens University of Charlotte and is the co-founder and editor of Prime Number Magazine. He is also the author of the popular literary blog Perpetual Folly. After receiving a BA in Philosophy from Northwestern University, Garstang served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea, where he taught English at Jonbuk University. He then earned an MA in English and a JD, magna cum laude, both from Indiana University, and practiced international law in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Singapore with one of the largest law firms in the United States. Subsequently, he earned a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and worked for Harvard Law School’s Program on International Financial Systems as a legal reform consultant in Almaty, Kazakhstan. From 1996 to 2001, he was Senior Counsel for East Asia at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., where his work focused on China, Vietnam, Korea, and Indonesia. Garstang teaches creative writing at Writers.com and elsewhere. He currently lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Clifford Garstang, author of In an Uncharted Country and What the Zhang Boys Know

John E. Stealey III

John E. Stealey III is Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, of History, Shepherd University. He is the author of numerous articles and essays about the Virginias and southern Appalachia. Three books explore a vital antebellum extractive industry, internal commerce, and legal development. His latest book is West Virginia’s Civil War-Era Constitution: Loyal Revolution, Confederate Counter-Revolution, and the Convention of 1872. The book is described as a comprehensive constitutional and political study of a new state’s fiercely contested establishment during the Civil War era.

2 “Provides new information and fresh insights into a number of important and poorly understood aspects of West Virginia’s early constitutional, legal, and political history,” says Brent Tarter at the Library of Virginia.

From publisher Kent State University: “When western Virginians separated from the Commonwealth of Virginia to form West Virginia, the distinctive action reflected five decades of deep dissatisfaction with the Commonwealth’s regressive constitution and the governmental procedures that protected slavery. The westerners’ creation of a new state was revolutionary in the context of U. S. statecraft. New constitutional approaches and laws addressed past wrongs and the realities of war. Grave external and internal forces, sometimes armed, opposed West Virginia’s creation and establishment of civil order and state institutions.

“The state-makers resorted to statutory and constitutional measures, often arbitrarily applied, to preserve the state, their legislation, and their political position. Some enactments removed state citizenship and the franchise from the disloyal; enabled the seizure of rebel property; required oaths of past loyalty for voting, suing in courts, and for the practice of professions such as teaching, law, and other pursuits; and established a stringent registration system administered by the loyal to prospective voters. Returning Confederates, along with stay-at-home sympathizers, and opponents of national policies organized a political and legal assault that succeeded.

“Rejecting the hackneyed and inaccurate concept of “Reconstruction” as it reflects rebel assertions, author John Stealey reinterprets West Virginia’s post–Civil War constitutional and political development within the counter-revolutionary framework. The Democratic/Conservative opponents of the Republican state-makers rode to power after seven years on the issues of race and the existence of wartime and postwar statutory and constitutional enactments that assured temporary state security and political dominance of the loyal. The torturous and complicated path to counter-revolutionary success and change occurred within the context of national events.

“A primary counter-revolutionary goal was drafting a new constitution to replace the state-makers’ original of 1861–1863. The Constitutional Convention of 1872 was the culmination of the quest for power. Stealey presents for the first time a comprehensive account of the debates and acts of the constitutional convention that reflected the Virginia and wartime experiences of delegates as well as the counter-revolutionary aims of the overwhelming Democratic/Conservative majority. This framework still serves as the Mountain State’s fundamental law.”

[email protected]/

Roger Engle

Roger Engle shares this description of his book, Stories from a Small Town Remembering My Childhood In Hedgesville, West Virginia: “Take a moment and picture your childhood home. Try to visualize a short walk from your doorstep. Can you conjure

3 up your neighborhood, nearby houses or businesses, and the people who lived or worked in them? Can you recall the events that unfolded nearby, or the activities that once filled your childhood world? Roger Engle took this mental journey throughout his hometown, and in doing so, rediscovered his childhood around every corner. Stories from a Small Town places us in Hedgesville, West Virginia, between the years of 1948 and 1964, and encourages us to meander there at a pace governed by the whimsy of a child. Mr. Engle takes us along on his adventures around town and into the surrounding wilderness, and provides an unfettered and rather amusing view into the life domestic. With tenderness and grit, he reveals both the challenges and opportunities of growing up in a working- class family during self-sufficient times. Stories from a Small Town offers us a delightfully vivid portrait of childhood, and may very well inspire us to remember, document, and share with future generations the stories of our own lives—while we are still able.

Former Hedgesville Mayor, William Moore says, “Roger’s book is a marvelous sociological piece that will leave you smiling and remembering. Make sure you purchase a copy for your historical memory archives!”

Roger Engle spent the first 21 years of his life in the small town of Hedgesville, West Virginia, surrounded by his grandparents, parents, siblings, and a large, extended family. He graduated from Hedgesville High School and went on to receive a Bachelor of Science degree from Shepherd College (now Shepherd University) in nearby Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Mr. Engle taught biology at South Hagerstown High School in Hagerstown, Maryland, for 30 years. While teaching there he completed graduate studies and received an advanced professional certificate from the State of Maryland. He also served in the United States Army. Mr. Engle has been married to his wife, Gula, for 44 years and they have two children, six grandchildren, and an ever-increasing number of great-grandchildren. After retiring from teaching, he has become very active in his hometown community of Martinsburg, West Virginia, volunteering, and serving on various boards and committees. He currently serves as president of the board of directors for Martinsburg-Berkeley County Parks & Recreation. Mr. Engle spends his leisure time enjoying his family, gardening, traveling, eating lots of barbecue as a certified judge of the Kansas City Barbeque Society, and, of course, writing.

[email protected]

Dr. Dorothy E. Hively

Dr. Dorothy E. Hively, director of Disability Support Services and associate professor of special education at Shepherd, has written Shepherd University, released July 29.

As part of Arcadia Publishing's Campus History Series, the book tells the story of Shepherd University from its beginning in 1871 through photographs.

4 "It features a historic overview," Hively said, "beginning with all the early presidents and activities, and then moves on to the students, buildings, athletics, and what has happened here over time, written through the lens of teacher education since Shepherd began as a normal school."

Hively said she thought to write the book after seeing the display of similar books about the history of Shepherdstown and surrounding towns in the university's bookstore in April of last year. She spent last summer gathering photographs and stories from the Scarborough Library archives, Office of University Communications, and alumni. She said the staff at the library, where she did most of her work for the book, was quite helpful.

Using the publisher's template allowed for a prescribed number of photographs, which Hively found the most challenging aspect of the process. She said she sifted through well over 500 photographs and had to scan nearly every one.

"To get the essence of Shepherd in a brushstroke, that's hard when you're trying to get more than 100 years in and do justice to the place," she said.

Of interest, Hively learned that early on students from West Virginia attended Shepherd for free, that in 1903 the seventh principal of the school left with his family in the middle of the night after he forced a female faculty member to resign based on an anonymous accusation of criminal activity of which she was innocent, and that in 1925 the storytelling club had a "Good English" box in which they collected for amusement examples of misused grammar heard around campus.

"There are a lot of interesting history stories that come out of this that I learned along the way that made me appreciate Shepherd even more," she said.

Hively said she hopes the book makes people smile when they think about their time at Shepherd and "think about the important contributions that students at Shepherd have made to the region for more than 100 years."

The book was funded by the Shepherd University Foundation and the Office of the President.

[email protected]

Belinda Anderson

Belinda Anderson’s newest book is a middle-grade novel titled, Jackson Vs. Witchy Wanda: Making Kid Soup. “Accomplished writer Belinda Anderson has created a middle-grade novel that sizzles with suspense,” writes Anna Egan Smucker, winner of the International Reading

5 Association Children’s Book Award for No Star Nights. “When a witch disembarks from the train in the small town of Glaslen, fifth-grader Jackson McKinney’s life is changed forever. Will he and his classmates find themselves the ingredients in Kid Soup? In this page-turner, the bullied, friendless Jackson learns not only resourcefulness and courage, but also the importance of trust – reaching out to friends.” “A wild, wonderful, and witchy ride that will keep young readers hooked until the very last page!” says Gretchen Moran Laskas, author of The Miner’s Daughter. Anderson’s previous literary work was selected for inclusion on the first official Literary Map of West Virginia, published by Fairmont State University. Her nonfiction has appeared in such publications as GOLDENSEAL, Wonderful West Virginia and The Encyclopedia of West Virginia. The former newspaper reporter also teaches creative writing at conferences and workshops and makes school appearances. Her library presentations have included readings and such topics as West Virginia authors and middle-grade literature. She has been named a master artist by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Jackson vs. Witchy Wanda: Making Kid Soup is published by Mountain State Press, a nonprofit press publishing literary works by West Virginians or about the state. Mountain State Press also published her three short story collections, The Well Ain’t Dry Yet, The Bingo Cheaters and Buckle Up, Buttercup.

www.BelindaAnderson.com [email protected]