Lindsay G. Arthur, Jr.

Lindsay G. Arthur, Jr. is a well-known lawyer who has tried over 150 cases during his 35-year career, specializing in products liability lawsuits. In 1974 he founded his current law firm, Arthur, Chapman, Kettering, Smetak, and Pikala, a highly regarded litigation firm in Minneapolis. He is also an entrepreneur. In 1985 he founded a biotech company that uses genetic engineering to develop microorganisms to degrade toxic waste.

Arthur has lectured and published extensively on a variety of legal topics. The Litigators, his first novel, combines his legal background with a bold critique of a myopic judicial system where lawyers focus on victory at all costs rather than addressing the human problems of their clients.

Arthur is also a keen sportsman who plays a mean game of tennis, and an outdoorsman who likes to spend time paddling through Minnesota's beautiful Boundary Waters Canoe Area. He is married with two sons and resides in the Minneapolis area.

Charles Locks

Charles Locks was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, including fifteen months of service in Vietnam, he majored in English literature at Macalester College. Locks lived for several years on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He owned and operated Lucy's Restaurant, a popular establishment where he met the characters that populate his tropical novel, Great Trouble in the Lesser Antilles.

He was also a co-contributor to Cass Gilbert, Life and Work: Architect of the Public Domain, published by W.W. Norton in 2001. Charles Locks lives in Wisconsin. Contact Charles Locks at chasman@grantsburgtelcom.net.

Philip Martin

Philip Martin is editor of The New Writer's Handbook, offering practical advice for writers at all levels. He directs Great Lakes Literary, a consulting firm that helps authors and small organizations get their best work published, and is a writer, editor, and publisher. He has produced books that have won the Benjamin Franklin and Banta awards and Small Press Award for Fiction, and is the author himself of several books on traditional culture and literary studies, including a book on speculative fiction, A Guide to Fantasy Literature. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His web site is www.greatlakeslit.com.

Anthony Signorelli

Anthony Signorelli is a businessman, concerned citizen, and cofounder and Executive Director of The Center for Thoughtful Democracy, which works to encourage civic engagement and dynamic political discourse. His previous publications include serving as editor of a collection of poems and essays entitled Rooster Crows at Light from the Bombing: Echoes from the Gulf War, nominated for a Minnesota Book Award in 1993. For five years, he co-edited a literary journal, Inroads: Journal of the Male Soul. He has run organic farms and an independent bookstore.

Signorelli lives in Stillwater, Minnesota, and operates a performance-improvement consulting practice in the St. Paul area. His editorials can be found on his blog at www.calltoliberty.net.

Cathy Sultan

Cathy Sultan, a native of Washington D.C., moved in 1969 with her Lebanese husband and two small children to Beirut, Lebanon – a city known for its welcoming residents, lovely Mediterranean climate and exotic blend of Arab and Western culture. For six years she led the life of her dreams, her home a rooftop apartment with a terrace full of flowers and a breathtaking view of the city. Her husband had a successful medical practice and her children were growing up speaking English, French and Arabic.
 
In April 1975 the Phalange militia attacked the Palestinians in East Beirut. Sultan’s tranquil tree-lined street, two blocks from the National Museum, became a deadly divide: the infamous Green Line, separating East from West Beirut. Despite the danger, she and her family remained, hoping for peace. A Beirut Heart: One Woman’s War – a memoir about her experience as wife and mother living through the bloody Lebanese civil war – is her second book. Her first, Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A Dialogue with Both Sides, was reissued by Scarletta Press in 2006. Tragedy in South Lebanon: The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006 will be released in May 2008.
 
Sultan and her husband now reside in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. She sits on the Executive Board of the National Peace Foundation, where she directs Middle East educational projects and co-leads delegations to Israel and Palestine though Interfaith Peace Builders. She is also involved with “Women in Black” – a group that stands in silent vigil to protest war, ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses. Her web site is www.cathysultan.com/cms.

James Peter Taylor & Kathleen Murphy-Taylor

James Peter Taylor and Kathleen Murphy-Taylor have been married for 11 years. Jim Taylor’s dangerous, confused, and at times remarkable life is the subject of the memoir Willow in a Storm. As a young boy, Jim suffered from continuous abuse. As a young man he turned to crime, until during a botched robbery in 1955, he unintentionally killed a community banker, a family man with young children. Sentenced to life, Taylor faced the horrors of more than four decades of prison life, as disturbed inmates and sadistic officers threatened his very existence. He managed to survive, matured spiritually, and eventually was released at age 70, partially blind.

Kathleen received her MSW from the University of Michigan and practiced social work for 32 years in the areas of child welfare, juvenile delinquency, mental health and senior citizen services. In her retirement, she gives full time care to Jim, who since 2002 has suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. They live in Minneapolis. Kathy can be reached at kcmurphytaylor@aol.com.

Bill Watkins

Bill Watkins was born in Birmingham in 1950 into a Welsh/Irish family. His bilingual parents were notable traditional singers. As a teenager he tramped the roads of the British Isles and Europe in the wake of his heroes, W. H. Davies, Welsh poet and author of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, and Eric “Burton” Blair, who later rose to fame as the English writer and socialist George Orwell. Having learned to play the tin whistle, fiddle, guitar, banjo and mandolin at an early age, Watkins is also an accomplished singer/songwriter whose most famous ditty, “The Errant Apprentice,” has been recorded worldwide. Watkins lives in Minneapolis, where he builds pubs in the British Isles style and serves as a cultural ambassador at Merlins Rest Pub. He's currently working on his next book, The Fiasco Society. Find him at www.merlinsrest.com/bill-watkins/.