Join author Laura Still and partner in Celtic Cat Publishing, Brent Minchey, for a detailed presentation of the pros and cons of self-publishing as opposed to traditional publishing. Learn how to get your manuscript ready for publication and how to find a market. Celtic Cat Publishing is an award-winning independent publisher founded in 1995. The publishing philosophy of Still and Minchey is to support new and established literary talent through original publications.

Laura Still is a published poet, playwright, educator, tour guide, and with her latest book, A Haunted History of Knoxville, a history writer. She has edited and screened thousands of submissions for contests and publications since 1999 and was awarded a Golden Shovel for her work in the literary trenches. Brent Minchey is an experienced business manager who has worked in book design for Celtic Cat and published plays and non-fiction by several authors for an Asheville, NC imprint. He brings technical and marketing experience in print and electronic formats.

The dead do tell tales, and perhaps no one knows that better than Dr. Bill Bass, renowned forensic anthropologist and founder of the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility known as “The Body Farm.” Sometimes called the bone detective, Bass spent decades studying human decomposition and osteology. For most people, being surrounded by dead bodies would cast a shadow on the sunniest of days, but the always-jovial Bass considered human remains as a challenge, a puzzle to be solved.

Bass received his PhD in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1961 and never ceased in his quest for knowledge. The pioneering forensic anthropologist dedicated over five decades to the study of human decomposition and osteology, often with the objective of establishing time and cause of death.

Dr. Bass is the author of more than 200 scientific publications, as well as Death’s Acre, the critically-acclaimed memoir he co-wrote with Jon Jefferson, a journalist and documentary film maker who previously served as staff science writer for Oak Ridge Laboratory. Using the pseudonym Jefferson Bass, the duo penned the popular fictional series known as the The Body Farm Series.

Sam Venable is a semi-retired humor columnist for the Knoxville News-Sentinel. The winner of numerous writing awards, he is the author of ten books. The newest collection is called Someday I May Find Honest Work, A Newspaper Humorist’s Life. In his latest book, Venable chronicles life and all the strange and absurd things that go with it. With his lively commentary and quirky observations, he brings an uncommon perspective to common experiences. But even as he describes these trials and tribulations, Venable admits—with what you can be certain is a big grin— “it sure beats workin’ for a living.”

Sunny 92.3 morning host James Howard has helped wake up the Chattanooga, Cleveland and North Georgia area since 2001 when he began co-hosting Luther in the Morning. As a lifelong Chattanooga resident James has shown his love for this community in many ways.

From hosting the annual Caring for Kids Radiothon to benefit Children’s Hospital at Erlanger, to good will excursions to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Haiti, mostly traveling during his own vacation time, you will find James tirelessly giving his time and talents to help make our community a better place to live.

James has written two children’s books. The first,Cricki the Nut, benefited the Epilepsy Foundation of Southeast Tennessee and the T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital. The proceeds from the second children’s book,What’s Iraq Like Daddy benefited the children of military personnel serving abroad. He also co-authored My Life with Lutherwith Holly Abernathy. James, who also hosts the popular Ch. 9 WTVC program This-N-That, is very involved with the Epilepsy Foundation of Southeast Tennessee, and regularly competes in Chattanooga’s IRONMAN events.

James resides in the East Brainerd area with his wife and two daughters and has worked at Sunny 92.3 since 1993.

Stephen Lyn Bales is senior naturalist at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. He has written for Smithsonian magazine and is a regular contributor to The Tennessee Conservationist magazine. Bales is also a regular speaker at Wilderness Wildlife Week and other venues.

His first book Natural Histories, published by UT Press, covered the natural history of the Tennessee Valley. Bales' second book, Ghost Birds: Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941 is the compelling story of Jim Tanner and his fieldwork on the "Lord God Bird" in the late 1930s. Tanner was the only ornithologist to conduct an in-depth study of the largest woodpecker to live in the United States, the legendary ghost bird of the South. This species became the subject of considerable controversy during the past decade. Tanner's fieldwork in the 1930s while a grad student at Cornell University provide a detailed look into the natural history of this species that may or may not be extinct.

Allen Robbins is the author ofTrial by Fire, which recounts the heroic work of Sevier County Electric System’s linemen during Sevier County’s deadly wildfires in 2016. Allen Robbins is a life-long resident of Sevier County, Tennessee. A graduate of Sevier County High School in 1985, he earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration from Cumberland College in 1990. Allen was a member of Cumberland’s first football team in 1985. He was a 3-year letterman for Cumberland earning Honorable Mention and Second Team All-Conference honors in 1988 and 1989 respectively.

In 1991, Allen began his career with Sevier County Electric System. From 1996 to 2003, he was the Programs Administrator, coordinating all phases of the marketing of electric services within the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Energy Right Program. From 2004 to 2015 he served as the System’s CFO. In 2016, the Board of Directors of Sevier County Electric System appointed Allen to his current position of CEO.

Allen is the current Vice-Chair of the United Way Board of Directors. He served two terms, 2010-2011 and 2012-2013, as Chairman of the Sevierville Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and is a past President of the Sevier County High School Quarterback Club. He most recently served as President of the University of the Cumberlands Alumni Board of Directors. He is a member of Richardson Cove Baptist Church and teaches the Senior Adult Sunday school class better known as the “Chum” Class.

He is married to the former Jachar Lyons and they have three children, Jacob (26) a graduate from Carson-Newman University, Dexter (24) a graduate from Liberty University, and Sierra (18) a freshman at East Tennessee State University. He is also a proud Grandpa to a new granddaughter, Mia Kate. Allen was a volunteer football coach for Sevier County Middle School football team for 19 years. His recreational hobbies are hunting, fishing and lounging on Douglas Lake.

A native of Knoxville Joe Holloway remembers Sunday drives through south Knox and Sevier Counties, where his father would point out the remnants of the “Slow & Easy’s” right-of-way. The railroad was abandoned five years before Joe’s birth. By then, scrap metal dealers, souvenir hunters and Mother Nature had a head start on erasing visible evidence of the line. With his interest in the Smoky already piqued by such road trips, Joe happened upon a copy of the late Elmer Sulzer’s Ghost Railroads of Tennessee at a local flea market. It was Chapter One of that 1975 work which cemented Joe’s permanent fascination, for it featured the first photos he’d ever seen of the Knoxville, Sevierville and Eastern Railway. His new book, Old Slow and Easy A History of the Railroad will be available soon.

Joe is a retired U.S. Army Staff Sergeant (1996-2008) and prior U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class (1986-1996). Now a career civil servant, he and his wife, Karen, have four grown children.

Therese Anne Fowler (pronounced ta-reece) is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author whose novels present intriguing people in difficult situations, many of those situations deriving from the pressures and expectations of their cultures as well as from their families. Her books are available in every format and in multiple languages and are sold around the world. Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald has been adapted for television by Amazon Studios. A Well-Behaved Woman is in development with Sony Pictures Television.

Therese earned a BA in sociology and cultural anthropology and an MFA in creative writing, both from North Carolina State University. She has been a visiting professor and occasionally teaches fiction writing at conferences and workshops. Her latest novel, A Good Neighborhood, is being hailed as “entertaining and provoking” and “one of those rare 'can't put down' books”.

Walter Ziffer, Holocaust survivor, author and educator, will present a talk, “Holocaust: When Law and Righteousness Clashed.”

As a teenager in 1942, Ziffer was seized from his home in what is now the Czech Republic, separated from his family, and sent to a series of Nazi slave labor concentration camps. He was finally freed at the age of 18 by Soviet troops and eventually was able to reunite with his parents, who had been held in separate camps and also survived until their liberation. He returned home and trained as a mechanic, then, after moving to the U.S., he worked for General Motors as an engineer.

Ziffer then turned to theology and earned two master’s degrees and a doctorate in that subject and worked as a Christian minister. He also authored several books about his experiences during the Holocaust, Judaism and early Christianity. He has taught at the University of Maine, UNC Asheville and Mars Hill University, as well as at theological seminaries in Europe and the U.S. He now considers himself a secular Jewish humanist.

Now 92 years of age, Ziffer continues as a public speaker and writer. Two years ago, he published his most recent book, a memoir titled Confronting the Silence: A Holocaust Survivor’s Search for God. Professor Richard Chess, chair of UNC Asheville’s Department of English and director of the university’s Center for Jewish Studies, described what Ziffer offers readers: “You will learn of Walter’s complex life journey, and you may experience, thanks to his skillfully told story and clearly articulated questions and insights, a sense of his presence, the presence of a great man who finds in his own story lessons important for the rest of us, especially now.”

Ziffer also is the author of The Teaching of Disdain – An Examination of Christology and New Testament Attitudes Toward Jews, and The Birth of Christianity From the Matrix of Judaism.