About The Writers

Pam Grout is the author of 15 books, two screenplays, a TV series and several plays. Her most recent book, 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life (National Geographic), debuts May 2009. Although she has no real specialty and writes about everything from recycling to God, there are those that claim she is a travel writer. Others swear she writes inspirational tomes. She likes to think her writing defies stereotypes. Her website is www.pamgrout.com

Mary Howe is a writer and web developer.  She has just finished her third unpublished novel and is now revising it.  She’s usually trying to figure out what to do next. Her PhD in linguistics from the University of Kansas is occasionally useful, but mostly not. She works on three blogs, Wonky Wheel, which is largely writing practice, Two Eye Workshop, a daily photo blog, and Practice Notes, on home yoga practice.  Mary’s nickname on the blog is Mollyavalon. Her motto is “Just click it and see what happens.”

Denise Low is Kansas Poet Laureate for 2007-2009. The author of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose, her publications include New and Selected Poems, Thailand Journal, Words of a Prairie Alchemist, and Touching the Sky. A fifth-generation Kansan of mixed German, Scots, Lenape, English, French and Cherokee heritage, Denise is a practicing poet, editor, publisher, library discussion leader, professor, reviewer, critic, and essayist. She is the interim dean of College of Humanities and Arts at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, where she has taught for over 20 years. An author of books, articles and reviews about poetry and American-Indian literature, Dr. Low has received numerous, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Lannan Foundation, and the Poetry Society of America among others. See some of her books at Mammoth Publications. She is also president-elect of Associated Writing Programs (AWP).

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is Kansas Poet Laureate for 2009-2011, and she is the the author of ten books, including four collections of poetry (Landed, Reading the Body, Animals in the House, Your Feet, Lot’s Wife); a memoir, The Sky Begins at a beloved writing guide, Write Where You Are; and several anthologies. Founder of Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College, where she teaches, Caryn gives writing workshops to many populations around the country, specializing in writing through serious illness, ecopoetics, and embodied writing. Her poetry and prose has been published in over 50 journals and anthologies, and she is a founder of the Continental Bioregional Congress and the Transformative Language Arts Network. Visit her blog as well as other blogs she maintains: Worlds of Change and Needle in the Bone.

Lucia Orth lived in Manila for five years working for a non-profit organization. She has also lived in London, Beijing, and Washington, D.C., and traveled extensively in the Philippines, Asia, and Eastern Europe. She graduated from Notre Dame Law School, and currently teaches in the Indigenous and American Indian Studies Department at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. Her first novel is Baby Jesus Pawn Shop, released November 2008.

Beth Reiber, long before she could read, spent hours poring over her grandparents’ latest National Geographic magazines. After living four years in Germany, first as a university student and then as a freelance travel writer selling to major U.S. newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, followed by a stint in Tokyo as editor of the Far East Traveler, she authored several Frommer’s guides, including Frommer’s Japan, Frommer’s Tokyo, and Frommer’s Hong Kong. She also contributes to Frommer’s Europe by Rail, Frommer’s China, Frommer’s USA, and Northstar Travel Media and writes a blog for the Japan National Tourist Organization’s website at ww.japantravelinfo.com. When not on the road, she resides in Lawrence, Kansas, with her two sons, a dog, and a cat in an 1890 Victorian home.

Diane Silver is a nationally syndicated columnist who writes about politics and public policy. Specializing in climate change, religion, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, she has published two books and articles and essays in The Progressive, Ms, Salon.com and other national venues. Today Diane is the filling in the sandwich of a three-generational household. She doesn’t quite balance full-time freelancing with a rather confused personal life.

Mary Margaret Simpson, who blogs by the name Marnie on the Creek, has been writing for as long as she can remember. Her first novel was written at the age of nine and received so much guff from her family that she had to try  to get better. She is still trying. Her day job is as a science writer but she has a file cabinet full of short stories and an unpublished middle-grade novel. Her articles and essays have appeared in trade journals and professional and university magazines and she has published short fiction for children.

After decades in landlocked Kansas, writer Susan Kraus now spends 3-6 months of the year in places closer to oceans, preferably where the locals speak a different language. In the last two years she has tracked penguins off the Chilean coast, zip-lined down a remote volcano (never again), danced in the streets of Ghent during their Flikken Festival and got carried away by a Fasching parade in Schweinfurt, Germany. She spent two weeks “In Search of the Perfect Waffle” in Belgium, swam with wild dolphins off Oahu, explored the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and got naked with strangers in Baden-Baden. Susan has published in Hemisphere’s (United Airlines In-Flight), My Midwest (Midwest Airlines), Kaleidescope (Tokyo), Family Fun, Kansas!, K.C. Star, Lawrence Magazine… and wrote “A Game Day Guide to Towns of the Big 12,” a book that evolved from her appreciation for college towns. She is an on-line columnist for Boomergirl, and received the top writing award from Society of American Travel Writers (Central States) in both 2008 and 2009. She has multiple graduate degrees, has been a university educator and therapist for 30 years, and believes that travel opens emotional doors, provides perspective, and provides “more bang for your buck” than therapy.