ROSE GLEN 2024 PROGRAM

Fayla Ott writes stories about American history. Her novel Afflicted (2018), set during the Salem witch trials of 1692, received high praise from Publisher's Weekly, and won the Redemptive Fiction Award in 2019. When she's not writing, she teaches college English full time.

Kelley Griffin and Amanda Marr ventured into the world of producing audio books together after connecting at Rose Glen Literary Festival a few years ago. Kelley is a prolific author of romantic suspense novels while Amanda provides the voice for her characters. Learn the basics of creating your own audio book during this informative and fun session.

R.L. Pete Wyatt is a 37-year veteran of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency where he worked as a boating officer, game warden, wildlife biologist, and regional wildlife manager. His career provided a plethora of stories. Thus far, Pete has used them to fill two of his three-volume set of humorous stories entitled An Appalachian Gamekeeper’s Soliloquy of Humorous Tales: Game Warden Stories of People and Places of Upper East Tennessee . His work has also been published in Mildred Haun Journal, Tennessee Game Warden Magazine, Appalachian Magazine, Tennessee Wildlife Magazine, and numerous technical journals.

Mike Aday is the librarian archivist at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Originally from Texas, Mike has worked in numerous cultural resource repositories, including the Dallas Municipal Archives, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Old Red Museum of Dallas County History and Culture. Mike served as an archive technician at Yosemite National Park before moving to East Tennessee to become librarian archivist at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Since then, he has helped thousands of researchers uncover the history of the park, the region, and its people. He has also contributed to Smokies Life journal and the Smokies LIVE blog.

Sam Venable has been on staff at the Knoxville News-Sentinel since 1970, as outdoors editor until 1985 and as a humor columnist since then. He is the author of 10 books, including Mountain Hands: A Portrait of Southern Appalachia and Someday I May Find Honest Work: A Newspaper Humorist’s Life. With his lively commentary and quirky observations, he brings an uncommon perspective to common experiences. He was the keynote luncheon speaker at the 2014 Rose Glen Literary Festival.

Stanford Johnson is an east Tennessee native and member of First Families of Tennessee. He’s also a highly decorated, honorably discharged, and formerly homeless Army Veteran. Stan has been in recovery from alcoholism since December 27, 2015, and credits the desire to write Our LITTLE Secret with saving his life and the writing of it with healing him. He co-authored At the Dead Hours of Midnight: A Bloody Reign of Terror in the Great Smoky Mountains with Richard Way and is currently working on a memoir chronicling his journey into and out of alcoholism.

Andy Peck is the editor for The Pecks of Mossy Creek series (Cross Mountain Books) which chronicles the life and times of the Peck Family (founders of Mossy Creek, now Jefferson City, TN) based on the stories and writings of their ancestors and descendants. The winner of East Tennessee Historical Society’s 2023 East Tennessee Community History Leadership Award, Andy has given keynote presentations and conducted book tours throughout the region.

Georgiana Vines has worked as a reporter, feature writer, and editor during her fifty-year journalism career. She retired as associate editor of The Knoxville News Sentinel in 2005, but still writes a political column for the paper every two weeks as a freelancer. Her first book, East Tennessee Newsmakers: Where Are They Now?(2019) is a collection of 47 stories profiling individuals who have made an impact on the history, culture, and politics of East Tennessee. All the stories originally appeared in the News Sentinel but have been updated and expanded.

Stephen Lyn Bales, a retired Ijams Nature Center naturalist, has written for Smithsonian Magazine and contributed to The Tennessee Conservationist. His first book, Natural Histories, covered the natural history of the Tennessee Valley. His second book, Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941, told the compelling story of Jim Tanner’s fieldwork on the “Lord God Bird” in the late 1930s. Bales’ newest book, Rising from the Ashes: The Chimney Tops 2 Wildfires in Memory and Art, documents a 2022 exhibition of original editorial illustrations commissioned by the University of Tennessee Press to complement the Chimney Tops II Wildfires Oral History Project. The four showcased illustrators have strong ties to East Tennessee. Bales is a regular speaker at Wilderness Wildlife Week and was the keynote luncheon speaker at the first Rose Glen Literary Festival.

Arthur Bohanan is an international award-winning patented inventor, researcher, lecturer, and writer. He is one of fewer than 1,000 certified latent print examiners worldwide and is a certified police instructor with 60 years in the study and practical application of forensics. In 1998, he created the first Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force in Tennessee and worked in an undercover capacity online until his retirement in 2001. He has responded to many disasters, including the World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina, and assisted in airline crashes to help identify human remains. He was twice named Knoxville Police Officer of the Year. His first book, Prints of a Man, details his life story. He is currently conducting research to locate the graves and determine the gender of the long dead.

Jayne Moore Waldrop is a Kentucky writer and attorney. She is author of Drowned Town (University Press of Kentucky 2021), named the INDIES Book of the Year Award silver winner in fiction and a 2022 Great Group Reads by the Women’s National Book Association; A Journey in Color: The Art of Ellis Wilson (Shadelandhouse Modern Press 2022);Pandemic Lent: A Season in Poems (Finishing Line Press 2021), and Retracing My Steps, a finalist in the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Series (Finishing Line Press 2019). Her children’s picture book biography of outsider artist Helen LaFrance is forthcoming in 2024. Her work has appeared in Appalachian Review, Still: The Journal, New Limestone Review, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, New Madrid Journal, Women Speak Anthology, and other literary journals and anthologies.

Suzanne Craig Robertson is the author of “He Called Me Sister: A True Story of Finding Humanity on Death Row” (Morehouse Publishing, 2023). She has served as the director of communications of the Tennessee Bar Association and is a former editor of the Tennessee Bar Journal, where, for more than three decades, she covered stories at the intersection of law and society. She is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and received her Master of Arts in writing in 2022 from Spalding University in Louisville. She and her husband Alan, who are lifelong Nashvillians, have two daughters and two grandsons.

Gary R. Wade’s legal career spans fifty years during which he worked in private practice, served as a city attorney for Pigeon Forge and mayor of Sevierville, was appointed and then elected to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals (1987-2006), served on the Tennessee Supreme Court (2006-2015) and was named Chief Justice in 2012. He retired from the Court in 2015, and thereafter was named Vice President and Dean of Lincoln Memorial University’s Duncan School of Law.

It was during his tenure as Chief Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court that Cecil Johnson’s last appeal prior to his execution for multiple counts of first-degree murder was heard. Chief Justice Wade and Suzanne Craig Robertson, author of He Called Me Sister, will participate in an engaging conversation highlighting their perspectives on Johnson’s life and legacy.

Student Poetry Slam facilitated by Jeff Williams