2021 Conference Faculty
Angela Jackson-Brown
Friday Keynote
Angela Jackson-Brown is an award winning writer, poet and playwright who teaches Creative Writing and English at Ball State University in Muncie, IN. She is a graduate of Troy University, Auburn University and the Spalding low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing. She is the author of the novel Drinking From A Bitter Cup and has published in numerous literary journals. Angela’s play, Anna’s Wings, was selected in 2016 to be a part of the IndyFringe DivaFest and her play, Flossie Bailey Takes a Stand, was part of the Indiana Bicentennial Celebration at the Indiana Repertory Theatre. She also wrote and produced the play It Is Well and she was the co-playwright with Ashya Thomas on a play called Black Lives Matter (Too). In the spring of 2018, Angela co-wrote a musical with her colleague, Peter Davis, called Dear Bobby: The Musical, that was part of the 2018 OnyxFest in Indianapolis, IN. Her book of poetry called House Repairs was published by Negative Capability Press in the fall of 2018, and in the fall of 2019, she directed and produced a play she wrote called Still Singing Those Weary Blues. Her new novel, When Stars Rain Down, to be published by Thomas Nelson, an imprint of HarperCollins, was recently published and Angela was recently awarded, by the Alabama Library Association, the Alabama Authors Award in poetry. Website.
Katie Boyer
I've been through any number of incarnations as a writer. Small town journalist and college newspaper editor. Newsletter writer from foreign shores. Graduate student in comparative literature, teacher of composition and lit survey classes. Lecturer, blogger, short story writer. A word for every situation, in other words. My most recent creative energy has been focused on screenwriting and producing short films.
Erin Clyburn
Erin Clyburn joined The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency as Associate Literary Agent in 2019 after an internship and apprenticeship with a boutique literary agency. She has worked as a copy editor and recipe editor in the magazine industry and was general manager and director of collection development for Turtleback Books. She received her BA in English Literature from Mississippi State University and her MA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University. When not working, Erin loves hiking, cooking, traveling, painting, and trying to keep her three rabbits, Felix, Agnes, and Valentino, from chewing up every baseboard in the house.
Jennifer Horne
Jennifer Horne is the Poet Laureate of Alabama (2017-2021). The author of three collections of poems, Bottle Tree, Little Wanderer, and Borrowed Light, she also has written a collection of short stories, Tell the World You’re a Wildflower. She has edited or co-edited four volumes of poetry, essays, and stories. Her latest work is a biography of the writer Sara Mayfield.
Matthew Layne
Bio forthcoming…
John Mantooth
Bio forthcoming...
Adam Prince
Bio forthcoming…
T. K. Thorne
T. K. Thorne has been passionate about storytelling and writing since she was a young girl, and that passion only deepened when she became a police officer. Graduating with a master’s in social work from the University of Alabama, Thorne served for more than two decades in the Birmingham police force, retiring as a precinct captain. She then became the executive director of City Action Partnership, a downtown business improvement district focused on safety, until retiring to write full time. Her books and essays include two award-winning historical novels (Noah’s Wife and Angels at the Gate); two nonfiction civil rights era works (Last Chance for Justice and Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham’s Civil Rights Days); and a dally with murder, mystery, and magic in House of Rose and House of Stone, the first two novels in the Magic City Stories trilogy. She writes from her mountaintop home northeast of Birmingham, often with a dog and cat vying for her lap and three horses hanging out in the front yard.
Randi Pink
Saturday Keynote
Randi Pink is the author of critically acclaimed and award-winning novels for readers of all ages. Pink’s young adult novel, Girls Like Us, was named one of School Library Journal’s Best Books of 2019, and National Public Radio suggested her newest novel, Angel of Greenwood, for teachers and librarians to “turn it face-out on the shelves.” While Publisher’s Weekly referred to Angel of Greenwood as a “harrowing fictional account of Black community action centering the eve of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.”
A native and resident of Birmingham, AL, Randi Pink leverages her unique experience with her southern roots when she writes. Pink is a daughter of the South, born into the rich and troubled histories that surround her. She passionately writes those stories in the hopes of sharing both the beauty and ugliness of our shared past.
Randi is a mother, writer, advocate, fighter, friend, and so much more. Through her platform of encouragement, love and truth, Randi connects with her loyal readers through short stories, web series’, novels, scripts and public journal entries.
Randi writes incessantly. She always has and she always will.
Also available by Randi Pink in our virtual bookshop: Into White
Tina Braziel
Tina Mozelle Braziel is the author of Known by Salt (Anhinga Press), winner of the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, and Rooted by Thirst (Porkbelly Press). She has been awarded an Alabama State Council on the Arts fellowship and an artist residency at Hot Springs National Park. As the Magic City Poetry Festival’s inaugural Eco Poet, she collaborated with the Cahaba River Society to develop eco-poetry curriculum and videos. She holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and directs the Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop for high school students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She and her husband, novelist James Braziel, live and write in a glass cabin that they are building by hand on Hydrangea Ridge.
Joel Eisenberg
Joel Eisenberg is an author, screenwriter and producer. His recent Amazon venture, Then Again, was critically lauded and presently shooting a second season, and his bestselling fantasy saga with co-author Steve Hillard, The Chronicles of Ara, was developed by Ovation TV and Gil Adler Productions for an 8-hour miniseries. Joel has also developed projects with or sold projects to TNT (Tales From the Crypt pilot and bible for M. Night Shyamalan), Fox Studios (Letters of a Drugstore Cowboy), CBS-Decades TV/Amazon Prime (Then Again), Atari (Dark Chambers), Roddenberry Entertainment (Oxygen), Garry Marshall (January Rain), John Landis (Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines), Cinemax (Hotline), Warner Brothers, EUE/Sokolow (Shalom Bollywood), Reelz Channel (“Bewitched” documentary) and startup Terror TV (Terror Talk) among others. Further, Joel has written and/or executive produced several feature films (Out of the Black as co-writer, April Showers as EP) that have won over a dozen U.S. film festival awards. He is a proud member of the WGA, PenAmerica, and the Horror Writers Association, and also frequently writes articles on sports entertainment, politics, social issues, and the arts. Joel is a partner in Council Tree Productions, a television development company. He speaks at film and writing conferences around the country, and considers himself a socially active content creator.
Kaitlyn Johnson
After receiving a BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, Kaitlyn refused to leave the concept of nightly homework behind. A literary agent for Belcastro Literary Agency, she is also a freelance editor at her own company, Strictly Textual. Kaitlyn started her literary journey as a copyeditor for academic publisher codeMantra, a YA editor for Accent Press, a Conference Assistant for GrubStreet, Boston, and has been agenting since 2016. She has written various articles for Writer’s Digest and has had a flash fiction story published in the anthology A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed. Twitter: @RedPenKaitlyn
Arnee Odoms
Bio forthcoming…
Karim Samshi-Basha
Karim Shamsi-Basha immigrated to the Untied States from Damascus in 1984. He attended the University of Tennessee and graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Karim admits that was not his forte! So he did what he loved: Telling stories. His children’s book, Cat Man of Aleppo, Penguin, won the 2021 Caldecott Honor. His upcoming novel, Cactus Pear, is about a 15-year-old Muslim boy in love with a Christian girl amid the Syrian Civil War. Karim’s desire for people to love one another is where his personal and professional goals intersect. He lives in Birmingham and is a father to three grown children: Zade, Dury, and Demi. His motto in life is, Carpe diem, and he adores squeezing the nectar out of this beautiful thing we call, life.
Sue Walker
Sue Walker is Professor Emerita at the University of South Alabama, a former Poet Laureate of Alabama 2003-2012, the Editor and Publisher of Negative Capability Press. She currently teaches a Wednesday Creative Writing Class at the Mobile Botanical Gardens in Mobile. She has published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and critical articles. Her publications include Let Us Imagine Her Name (Clemson University Press) and The Ecological Poetics of James Dickey (Edwin Mellen Press) which was awarded The Adele Mellen Prize for its distinguished contribution to scholarship, as well as the Alabama Eugene Current- Garcia Award for Distinguished Scholarship.
TJ Beitelman
TJ Beitelman is the author of six books of poetry and prose, most recently This Is the Story of His Life, a linked sequence of prose poems published by Black Lawrence Press in 2018. His work has garnered individual artist's fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham (now Create Birmingham). A graduate of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, he has served as editor of Black Warrior Review and Alabama Heritage magazine. He currently chairs the Creative Writing department at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham and serves as President of the AWC Board of Directors and as Vice President of the Alabama Writers' Forum's Board of Directors. He can be found on-line at tjbman.me.
Also available by TJ Beitelman in our virtual bookshop: John the Revelator and Communion
Jemiscoe Chambers-Black
Before Jemiscoe "Jem" Chambers-Black joined Andrea Brown Literary Agency in 2020, she was an assistant director for film and television. She has worked as a freelance editor and assistant editor-in-chief for a literary magazine. She has a B.A. in English Literature and an MFA in creative writing in fiction. When Jem is not reading or editing–which doesn’t leave many hours in the day–she will most likely be found binge-watching something on Netflix or Disney Plus with her family, becoming a world-class couch slug (It's a thing! She promises). She represents illustrators, picture book authors (by referral only), MG, YA, and adult authors.
Shaun Hamill
Shaun Hamill received his BA in English from the University of Texas at Arlington, and his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His debut novel, A Cosmology of Monsters, was released by Pantheon books in 2019. His fiction has appeared in Carve and Tor Nightfire's Come Join Us By the Fire, and his nonfiction has appeared at Crimereads and Tor Nightfire. He also co-hosts two podcasts: Team Hurricane Returns, and Fandom University. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and is finishing a new novel. Learn more at his website.
Monique Jones
Monique Jones has spent about a decade in her journalism and blogging career, expressing her voice about representation and inclusion issues in entertainment. Jones has been published across the internet at outlets such as Entertainment Weekly, Tor, SlashFilm, Mediaversity Reviews, Shadow And Act, Ebony, Zora, The Offing, and The Huffington Post, to name a few. She is also a Rotten Tomatoes-certified critic and is a reviewer for Common Sense Media.
Available by Monique Jones in our virtual bookshop: The Book of Awesome Black Americans: Scientific Pioneers, Trailblazing Entrepreneurs, Barrier-Breaking Activists, and Afro-Futurists
Charlotte Pence
Charlotte Pence’s new book of poems, Code, is a finalist for Foreword Reviews Indie Poetry Book of 2020. Code details not only the life cycle, but also the means of this cycle: DNA itself. Her first book of poems, Many Small Fires, received a silver medal INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award from Foreword Reviews. A graduate of Emerson College (MFA) and the University of Tennessee (PhD), she is now the director of the Stokes Center for Creative Writing at University of South Alabama.
Also available by Charlotte Pence in our virtual bookshop: Poetics of American Song Lyrics
Voice Porter
Voice Porter is a community development consultant, writer, and poet, and orator who helps to facilitate collaboration between artists, community, and business. He is the creative director of "Bards & Brews" a monthly poetry event in partnership with the Birmingham Public Library and "On Stage at the Carver", a monthly poetry event in partnership with the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Voice is co-founder of Ensley Alive and founding director of The Color Project Ensley. Voice Porter has had spokenword published by Starbucks and has given workshops and performances internationally.
Alec Shane
Bio forthcoming