Faculty from the 2007 Conference

Agents, & Editor Faculty

Stacey Barney, an editor at Putnam Books for Young Readers, has held posts in both adult and children's book publishing, beginning her career at Lee & Low Books, a multicultural children's book publisher. She then worked at Farrar, Straus and Giroux with such talented new writers as Chris Abani and Lisa Dierbeck. At Amistad/HarperCollins, she published LA Times bestselling author Tamara T. Gregory's Passport Diaries as well as acclaimed author Ronin Ro's Raising Hell: The Reign, Ruin, and Redemption of Run-D.M.C, and Austin's own Gilbert Tuhabonye's This Voice in My Heart, 2006.

Before coming onboard Putnam's team, she worked at Dafina/Kensington, where she launched a Young Adult list with such titles as DRAMA HIGH, SO NOT THE DRAMA, BOY SHOPPING, and PERRY SKKY JR, the spin-off to bestseller Christian teen series PAYTON SKKY. At Putnam, Stacey is looking for multicultural voices in everything from picture books to Young Adult, with a particular interest in middle grade and chapter books.

Miriam Goderich, completed a Masters Degree in English from Columbia University, and immediately when to work for Jane Dystel Literary Management. Six years later, she became a partner in the agency. In 2003, the agency was renamed to be Dystel and Goderich Literary Management.

She works with both fiction and non-fiction authors.

She has worked closely with established authors, such as David Morrell (best selling thriller writer, whose novel First Blood was the basis for the Rambo films), Joe Konrath (the "Jack" Daniels mysteries), Reed Arvin (starred review in Publishers Weekly for his legal thriller), and Mary Russell (her A Thread of Grace got a starred review in Publishers Weekly). Goderich has been active in building the agency's “thriller” list.

She also has a strong interest in narrative non-fiction and works with Pulitzer Prize winners and nationally known journalists such as Joe Hallinan of the Wall Street Journal, and Dan Hurley, whose latest book, Natural Causes, was released in December, 2006, by Broadway Books and has received excellent reviews by Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

Click here to visit her agency’s blog.

Miriam Hees is the publisher of Blooming Tree Press, dedicated to creating quality books for young readers and adults.

You can visit the Blooming Tree Press website by clicking here.
We will have more on Miriam Hees, who not only publishes books for children, but also writes them.

Author Faculty

Jane Graves has been honored with more than a dozen awards. Among them, Flirting with Disaster won the 2004 Bookseller’s Best Award and the 2004 Windy City Choice Award. Tall, Dark and Texan, 2004, won another National Readers’ Award and also the Golden Quill Award. Risky Business won the 2003 National Readers’ Choice Award, plus the 2003 Aspen Gold Award, and the 2003 Texas Gold Award.

She is a six time finalist for Romance Writers of America’s Rita Award, and in 1999 was a finalist for its Golden Heart Award. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She also writes under the name Jane Sullivan.

For more information on this award-winning writer, visit her website by clicking here.

Betsy Haynes' 75th juvenile novel will be published in the summer of 2007. She also writes for young adults. She has written historical novels, mysteries, supernatural books and humor. Her Bone Chillers series became an ABC Saturday Morning television series. Her humorous novel, The Great Mom Swap, was made into an ABC Saturday Night Movie.

Her books have been translated into seventeen languages. She has spoken at conferences in the U.S., Spain and Portugal. She has been an instructor for the Institute of Children’s Literature and currently teaches “Writing the Middle-Grade Novel” online for UCLA Extension.

She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, the Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, and Sisters in Crime. She has served five times on the selection committee for the juvenile division of the Edgar Allan Poe award given by MWA, and three times on the selection committee for the annual SCBWI award.

For more information on this talented writer, visit her website by clicking here.

Dusty Richards has had 65 books published under his own name and various pseudonyms, plus dozens of short stories and hundreds of articles and columns.

After a varied career in ranching, auctioneering, rodeo announcing, TV news, and business management, his first novel Nobel's Way was published in 1992. In 2003, his novel The Natural won the Oklahoma Writers Federation Fiction Book of the Year award. In 2004, The Abilene Trail won the same award.

News Flash! Dusty has just been named winner of TWO Spur Awards for 2007. He was awarded one for his novel Horse Creek Incident and another for his short fiction piece Comanche Moon. The prestigious Spur Award is the highest award given by Western Writers of American. It's a great honor to win one. Two in the same year? It's never happened before.

In 2004, he was inducted into the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame. For more information on this prolific writer, visit his web site by clicking here.

Joe Lansdale has published more than 20 books, and well over 100 other works. Booklist called him “an immense talent.” The New York Times said he has “a folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace.”

He’s won five Bram Stoker horror awards, a British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, the “Shot in the Dark” International Crime Writer’s Award, the Booklist Editor’s Award, the Critic’s Choice Award, and a New York Times Notable Book award.

Two of Lansdale’s short stories have been adapted to film: "The Drive-In Date" and "The Job." He’s also written four episodes of Batman: The Animated Series plus one episode of Superman: The Animated Series . His works have been translated into a number of languages.

For more information on this prolific writer, visit his web site by clicking here.

Dr. Ted Rankin has more than 34 years experience as a forensic pathologist. He was trained in Forensic Autopsies as well as Medico-legal Autopsies. For some years, he traveled over much of northeast Texas at the request of law enforcement agencies and Federal agencies, investigating any type of suspicious deaths, air crashes, and medical autopsies to determine the cause of death during medical or surgical treatment. He has presented facts and his conclusions in dozens of court room trials.

“The search for disease, its source or cause, and its effects was an experience in detection every single day. Sherlock Holmes, himself, could not have had a more intriguing experience.”

Dr. Rankin writes about the mysteries of medical practice. He tends toward short stories based on genealogy, medical history, or military experiences. He has started on a novel based on historical medical events.