Meet Jim Reed and Liz Reed, 2019 Conference Faculty.

Jim Reed.

Jim Reed has been performing and writing since the age of four. A native of Tuscaloosa, his career includes extended stints as a television and radio personality, a public relations mad man, a small-time film actor/narrator, stage performer and--for nearly forty years--owner and operator of Reed Books/The Museum of Fond Memories in Birmingham, Alabama. He has authored thirteen books and 2,000 stories about his life in the Deep South. His weekly podcast can be found on youtube, "Jim Reed's Red Clay Diary."

For more information, visit www.jimreedbooks.com or www.redclaydiary.com.

Liz Reed.

After 35 years in the business world, Liz Reed sold her share of MARKETRY, a marketing research firm based in Birmingham, and retired in December 1999. For a complete change of pace and to fulfill a long-held dream, she enrolled as a degree-seeking student at the University of Alabama in Birmingham Department of Art and Art History, graduating with honors in 2005. During her years at UAB, Reed approached each new art medium with the same vigor. Drawing, photography, computer graphics, three-dimensional design, painting and sculpture, filmmaking -- each presented a new challenge and a different opportunity for expression. She was awarded 1st Place – Sculpture in the UAB Student Juried Exhibition her senior year. Reed’s first passion is her family and a close second is the subject of racial inequality; another major concern is living a well-balanced life full of color, pattern, form, shape and texture. Her major challenge has been transferring left-brain business skills to the right-brain arts environment.

To keep one foot in the business world, she created Blue Rooster Press to guide writers through the self-publishing process. Blue Rooster provides book & page design, editing, proofreading and documents ready for print-on-demand press. In addition she serves as art and layout editor of Birmingham Arts Journal, a quarterly literary and arts magazine now in its 16th year of publication. Birmingham Arts Journal presents a publication award to one member of the Alabama Pastel Society annually. Reed is married to author and humorist, Jim Reed, owner of Reed Books in Birmingham; they have five children, seven grandchildren, and soon-to-be two great grandchildren. She and her husband have lived in Birmingham’s Southside neighborhood, in a 1906 Craftsman style house, for thirty-eight years.