Three panelists will address research and fact-finding as it relates to writing: Allison Gilbert, who addresses the how-to of research and how research supports non-fiction work, Meg Ruley, a literary agent who addresses why you get better book deals when your book is full of actual facts, and Marilyn Johnson, a writer whose work is filled with facts.
Allison
Gilbert is the author of Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for
Those Who Have Lost Both Parents (Seal Press, 2006) and is coeditor
of Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11
(Bonus Books, 2002). She has written for numerous newspapers and magazines
including The New York Times, and is now a frequent contributor
to The Huffington Post. Her latest book, Always Too Soon,
sparked the nationwide creation of Parentless Parents, a network of parents
who have experienced the loss of their own mothers and fathers. Allison
is also a public speaker addressing grief, recovery from loss, and the
bonds that hold families together. When not writing books, Allison is
an Emmy award-winning television news producer, most recently at CNN in
New York. Her work includes coverage of the September 11th terrorist attacks,
Hurricane Katrina, and the Supreme Court nomination hearings of John Roberts.
Marilyn Johnson wrote The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries (now in paperback from Harper Perennial) after writing obituaries for Katharine Hepburn, Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis, Johnny Cash, Bob Hope, and Marlon Brando for Life and other magazines. She has been a staff writer for Life and an editor for Esquire. Her articles and poetry have appeared in many publications, and her reviews and essays about books appear every week on AARP Online. She lives in Briarcliff, and is working on a book about librarians. Marilyn is a long-time friend of the HVWC.
Meg Ruley joined the Jane Rotrosen Agency in 1981 as an assistant, but due to her poor typing skills, was excused from that position. Subsequently, she directed the foreign rights, serial, movie/television departments for the agency while developing her own client list. Currently she concentrates full time on representing writers of commercial fiction and non-fiction.
All readings include a question & answer period and a reception with books by the author(s) for sale.
Suggested
Donation: $5 ($3 for HVWC members and those under age 18)
Programs and events at The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center are made possible, in part, by grants from the Bydale Foundation, the David G. Taft Foundation, the Orchard Foundation, and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by the Basic Program Support Grant of the Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government.