Twila Belk
Twila Belk is a popular speaker, author, freelance writer, radio personality, and the director of the Quad-Cities Christian Writers' Conference. She also has the wonderful privilege of acting as personal assistant, publicist, and marketing director for NY Times bestselling author and international speaker, Cecil Murphey.
For more information about Twila,  visit www.gottatellsomebody.com.

Ann Boaden

Ann Boaden earned her undergraduate degree from Augustana College and her master’s and doctorate in English from the University of Chicago. She teaches writing fiction and creative nonfiction at Augustana; her work in both genres has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Buffalo Carp, Big Muddy, Knight Literary Journal, Northwoods Journal, The Heartlands Today, South Dakota Review, Wascana Review, and in the anthology Christmas on the Great Plains, published by the University of Iowa. 

She has collaborated with an Augustana colleague on two novels for young readers, and has written script and lyrics for four original short musicals based on local history and performed in the Quad-Cities area. She has also written two scripts for New Ground Theatre, the Quad-Cities’ professional regional theatre. In 2005 she received the Davenport Public Library’s Author Achievement Award. Dr. Boaden received an award of commendation (November 2007) from the Concordia Historical Society for a series of three articles I did (creative nonfiction genre) on the first three women graduates of Augustana College (they appeared in the Lutheran Journal). Also I guess Karin Youngberg's and my YA mystery, The Mystery of the Singing Mermaid (revised edition, with illustrations by Bill Hannan) will be out by summer.  

Susan Carroll
Author Susan Carroll began her career in 1986, writing historical romance and regencies, two of which were honored by Romance Writers of America with the RITA award.  She has written twenty four novels to date and is contracted for number twenty-five.  

Her St. Leger series received much acclaim.  The Bride Finder was honored with a RITA for Best Paranormal Romance in 1999 and also received the Reviewers Choice Award from Romantic Times magazine for Historical Romance of the year.  Two sequels followed, The Night Drifter and Midnight Bride.

Ms. Carroll launched a new series  with the publication of the The Dark Queen, The Courtesan, The Silver Rose and The Huntress set during the turbulent days of the French Renaissance.  A blend of history, magic, romance and intrigue, these books relate the saga of the Cheney sisters, three women of extraordinary abilities who live in constant peril of being accused of witchcraft. The novels combine fictional characters with real events and personages such as the enigmatic Catherine de Medici, the lusty Henry of Navarre and the dynamic Elizabeth I of England. She is currently working on the next book in the series, Twilight of A Queen.

Ms. Carroll was born in Latrobe, Pa., the youngest daughter of the late Anthony and Viola Cute, formerly of Lloydsville. She spent much of her childhood in South Jersey where she graduated from Oakcrest High School in Mays Landing. She attended college at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she received a B.A. in English with a minor in history. 

Ms. Carroll currently resides in Moline. She is a member of both the Quad City branch of the Romance Writers of America and the Windy City Chapter in Chicago. She also reenacts civil war history as part of the 16^th Iowa Regiment and Camp McClellan Ladies Aide Society. Divorced, she is the proud mother of a son serving in the air force and a free spirited daughter studying politics.

Connie Heckert

CONNIE HECKERT, M.A., a former college instructor, teaches Writing for Children and Teens, and the Books courses for the Institute of Children's Literature, and has more than  330 students. She is the author of 13 books for children, teens and adults, including Dribbles (Clarion); To Keera With Love (Sheed and Ward) and Roots and Recipes (Pelican Publishing). She has served as Iowa Regional Advisor for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators since 2000. In addition to marketing her personal projects, she currently is researching and writing a commissioned, corporate/family history for the descendants of Louis Rich.
 

David McFarland
David Alexander McFarland has and MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and has been writing for more than thirty years. He has published internationally short stories, essays and poetry in various literary journals such as Mississippi Review, Southern Humanities, and on the Internet at Slow Trains and Southern Hum.

Mark McLaughlin

Mark McLaughlin's fiction, articles and poems have appeared in more than 800 magazines, newspapers and websites worldwide, including Galaxy, Cemetery Dance, and Writer's Digest. In addition, he is the author of the fiction collections, Pickman's Motel, Slime After Slime, Hell Is Where The Heart Is, and Motivational Shrieker; the novel Monster Behind The Wheel (written with Michael McCarty); and the poetry collections, Phantasmapedia, Attack of the Two-Headed Poetry Monster (written with Michael McCarty), and The Gossamer Eye (written with Rain Graves and David Niall Wilson), which won the Bram Stoker Award for Excellence in Poetry.

Rebecca Wee

Rebecca Wee is the author of Uncertain Grace, a collection of poems which received the 2000 Hayden Carruth Award for New and Emerging Poets and was published in 2001 by Copper Canyon Press.  In 2003 she was chosen by U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins to receive one of two annual Witter Bynner fellowships in poetry, supported by the Library of Congress and the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry.

At Augustana College she teaches composition, literature, and poetry workshops, as well as independent and directed studies in poetry and creative writing.  With Professor Ann Boaden she meets weekly with the student group, After Hours Poetry and Fiction, and she is a member of Augustana's Women and Gender Studies board.  From 2003-2005 Wee served as the second Poet Laureate of the Quad Cities.