Tentatively signing and selling books at the festival will be:

Rick A. Baumgartner (April 10), a former newspaper journalist, has lived in theHuntington area since 1975. He is the author or editor of 15 book-length, non-fiction works, nearly all dealing with American Civil War and World War I subjects, and a selection of these will be available April 10 at the book festival. Baumgartner is the recipient of the Richard B. Harwell Award (for Echoes of Battle: The Atlanta Campaign), and the Alexander C. McClurg Award (for Blue Lightning: Wilder's Mounted Infantry Brigade in the Battle of Chickamauga). His latest book, This Carnival of Hell, was released in January 2010 and will be followed in April with publication of At Death's Door: A Yankee Soldier's Story of Survival in Confederate Captivity.

Rebecca Brock (April 10). Mild-mannered librarian by day and mild-mannered horror/romance writer by night, Rebecca is the author of the romance novel, The Giving Season. She has also had stories included in the new horror anthology, The Best of All Flesh, as well as History is Dead, Love Damned Love, Decadence of the Dead, Brainchild: A Collection of Artifacts, Cold Flesh, and The Book of More Flesh. She's written book reviews for Bookgasm.com and occasionally contributes a column on writing to Ology magazine. She's currently working on adding to her collection of rejection slips by writing more horror stories and novels, as well as scripts. Visit her online at: http://www.rebeccabrockonline.com.

Mary Calhoun Brown (April 10) is the award-winning author of There Are No Words. Brown tells stories about things that matter, weaving colorful and sensitive characters into history for a generation that prefers to be entertained rather than educated. Brown is an advocate for children and adults with autism. She also partners with educators to create curriculum guides for her novels so teachers and home-school parents can meet state requirements while making the most of classroom and planning time. She is a professional speaker and loves to spend time with students, parents and teachers.

James E. Casto (April 17) is associate director for public information at the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing (RCBI) in Huntington. He joined RCBI in 2004 after retiring from The Herald-Dispatch newspaper, where he was a reporter and editor for more than 40 years. He’s written freelance articles for a long list of national, state and local magazines and newspapers and is the author of more than a half dozen books on local and regional history, the latest of which is The Great Ohio River Flood of 1937.

Donald Childs (April 10) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, where he lived until he was 2 years until his family moved to West Virginia, where they were originally from. Growing up he recalls writing hs first play at age 8. Writing was, and remains, a passion. As well as plays he has written poetry and songs, but novels and short stories are his main focus. Donald Childs attributes many of his ideas tohis vivid dreams. In 2005 he won the Merritt Award for excellence in song writing from Paramount, a major accomplishment. Accolades aside, Donald Childs' passion is to write for a living, as he says, "To share my artwork with the world. To uplift the spirits of the one who is reading the book. My goal with writing is to be able to do what I love for a very long time. I love to submerge myself in my works. Milk Carton Mikey is the first of many novels to come."

Jack Dickinson (April 17) is a West Virginia native and a 1966 graduate of Marshall University. He is a retired IBM Systems Engineer. He is currently employed by Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia as the Bibliographer of the Rosanna Blake Confederate Collection. This collection has been ranked among the top five Southern and Confederate history collections in the United States. Jack is the author of ten books and numerous magazine articles on the Civil War, including two unit histories in the Virginia Regimental Histories Series. He has had articles published in the Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, by Simon & Schuster, and the West Virginia Encyclopedia. Jack is also a member of the Company of Military Historians, a group of writers on military subjects, regiments, and wars, and has had articles published in their Journal. Jack is the 1999 recipient of the Jefferson Davis Historical Writing Award from the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the History Writer's award from the West Virginia Dept. of Archives and History. He is also the 2009 recipient of the West Virginia National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) award for outstanding contributions to West Virginia state and local history and a recipient of the DAR's national history award. He is currently a voting member of the West Virginia Archives and History Commission.

Kay Stamper Dickinson (April 17) is co-author with her husband, Jack of the 4-volume series on the Norfolk and Western railroad history of southern West Virginia. These books tell the history of the coming of the railroad into southern West Virginia, centered around the building of the N&W Railroad, the growth of the coalfields, the early history of the communities along the track and people of the area. In addition to co-authoring these books and editing her husband’s Civil War books, Kay is recognized as a professional researcher on West Virginia and the surrounding area. She has conducted research at the National Archives, the Library of Congress’s Manuscript Division, and the state archives and historical societies in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina. She is an experienced genealogist and historian with over 30 years experience.

Danny Fulks (April 17) was born and raised along the river in southern Ohio and spent his teaching career at Marshall University. His work evokes a special sense of place and time, stressing the close-knit relationship between the people, work, and the land of the Tri-State area. A Professor Emeritus at Marshall University, Danny Fulks has inspired countless students with his commitment to the power of the written word. His recent works, Tragedy on Greasy Ridge and Tick Ridge Faces the South are fine examples of his unerring ability to capture the essence of this special region of Appalachia and the broader South.

Debra Gaskill (April 10) is the managing editor of the Washington Court House (Ohio) Record Herald. She has been an award-winning journalist, covering everything from education to local politics and crime for 15 years, writing for a number of Ohio newspapers, the Associated Press and several national magazines. Debra and her husband Greg have two adult children and raise llamas and alpacas on their farm in Enon, Ohio. Barn Burner is her first book, which was written as a thesis for her master's degree in creative writing from Antioch University.

Ron Houchin (April 17), a retired public school teacher in the Appalachian region of southern Ohio, was raised in Huntington, West Virginia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southwest Review, The Southern Poetry Review, The Potomac Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and over two hundred other journals. His fifth book of poetry, Museum Crows, was published by Salmon Publishing of Ireland, 2009. Ron's awards include the Vesle Fenstermaker Poetry Prize from Indiana University, an Ohio Arts Council Fellowship, Poetry Book of the Year from the Appalachian Writers' Association, and nominations for Paterson and Pushcart Prizes.

Regina Jeffers (April 10): Writing about "passion" comes easily to Regina Jeffers. A master teacher for thirty-seven years, she has passionately taught thousands of students English in the public schools of West Virginia, Ohio, and now in North Carolina. Yet, "teacher" does not define her as a person. Ask any of her students or her family, and they will tell you Regina is passionate about so many things: her son, children in need, words, music, dance, the theatre, pro football, classic movies, the BBC, track and field, books, books, and more books. Holding multiple degrees, Regina often serves as a Language Arts or Media Literacy consultant to surrounding school districts and has served on state and national educational commissions. A Time Warner Star Teacher and Crystal Apple Finalist, as well a Martha Holden Jennings Scholar, Jeffers is relatively new to the publishing realm although this is not her first piece of writing. "I have written all my life," she says, "except it was not always in this format. When I write now, I write as I used to choreograph routines for my dance teams; I write the scene in my head like a movie. Usually, it plays there for several days being tweaked and rewritten, but, eventually, I put it to paper. Generally, it does not change much from there because I have completed several mental rewrites before the pen and papers are included."

Dr. Debra Johanyak (April 10) grew up in Akron, Ohio. Her graduate studies included a year in Shiraz, Iran, where she held a teaching assistantship. Debra began her professional career as an English instructor, and later, as an assistant professor, at Kent State University before coming to The University of Akron Wayne College, where she currently is Professor of English. She also is Past President of the Ohio Association of Two Year Colleges (1999-2000). In addition to teaching English composition and literature courses, including Shakespeare and His World, Debra enjoys writing and publishing. Married to an Iranian, and mother of two young children, Debra Johanyak was a teaching assistant at Iran's Shiraz University when the American Embassy in Tehran was taken over by militants on November 4, 1979. Behind the Veil tells the story of a woman with dual citizenship who loves both the United States and Iran but must choose between them when the embassy takeover triggers an international and personal crisis.

John McKernan (April 17), recently retired from the English department at Marshall University, has influenced countless students at Marshall. During his time at Marshall he won recognition for his teaching and for his poetry, and was awarded numerous honors, among them The Marshall and Shirley Reynolds Outstanding Teaching Award from Marshall University; The West Virginia Professor of the Year Award from The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; The Robert H. Winner Award from The Poetry Society of America; a citation for Mentoring from West Virginia Writers Inc.; and poetry prizes from numerous literary magazines. Outside of the classroom John McKernan remains a strong influence on the regional poetry scene through his work with the Guyandotte Poets and as editor and publisher of ABZ Press.

Llewellyn McKernan (April 17) has been published both as a poet and as the author of children's books. She has lived in Huntington since moving from Arkansas, where she received an M.A. in English from the University of Arkansas. As well as practicing her craft she has taught as an adjunct faculty member at Marshall University. Her work has been widely published and recognized. The Kenyon Review, Agni, Southern Poetry Review, Antietam Review, Appalachian Journal, The Potomac Review, Nimrod have all published Llewellyn's work, and she has been awarded over 50 prizes in state, regional, and national poetry contests.

Karen L. Newman (April 10) lives in Kentucky where she's an active member of Horror Writers Association and edits Illumen and Afterburn SF. She also writes a column for The Black Glove: Horror Culture and Entertainment. Over three hundred of her short stories and poems have been published both online and in print in places such as Dead Worlds: Undead Stories, The Pedestal Magazine, and Kentucky Monthly. Her poetry collections include EEKU (Sam's Dot, 2005), ChemICKals (Naked Snake Press, 2007), and Toward Absolute Zero (Sam's Dot, 2009). She won the 2005 Kentucky Mary Jane Barnes Award and two of her poems received honorable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. She's been nominated for a Rhysling Award and twice nominated for a Dwarf Star Award. Please visit her online at http://home.zoomnet.net/~karennew.

Eliot Parker (April 10) is an Assistant Professor of English at Marshall Community and technical College. He teaches writing and literature courses for the college and also serves as director of MCTC's writing Center. He is a Teacher Consultant with the national Writing project and a literary reviewer with the Military Writers Society of America (MWSA) and Dorrance Publishing.

Colonel Charles Dahnmon Whitt (April 10) was born in Virginia in 1944. Throughout his life he has been a keen student of the Civil War and his family genealogy. It was these interests which led him, in 1999, to begin to research his family history in earnest. This, in turn, led to the publication of an historical novel based on the times and adventures of a direct descendant, David Crockett Whitt. Anyone interested in how family history research can be turned into a first rate piece of historical fiction would do well to meet with Colonel Whitt!

Bob Withers (April 17) is well-known throughout the area both as a former newspaperman, for the Huntington Advertiser and the Huntington Herald-Dispatch, and as an author of two books which focus on the historical importance of the railroads, The President Travels by Train and The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in West Virginia. His keen interest in railroads, especially the B&O, was developed during his elementary school years, when B&O steam engines chugged past his school. Seeing Dwight Eisenhower's campaign train on the same line in 1952 intensified that interest. Over the years, he formed friendships with many B&O railroaders, some of whom shared old railroad photographs with him, so he could experience the rich segments of railroad history he had missed. Since 1959, Withers has been a charter member of the Collis P. Huntington Railroad Historical Society Inc., a chapter of the National Railway Historical Society and has served as its president and recording secretary. He has written two previous books as well as several articles on railroads for Trains magazine, Classic Trains magazine, Railfan & Railroad magazine and was a contributor to the Encyclopedia of North American Railroads.