Jeri Watts worked as a public school teacher for 27 years. She has written numerous short stories as well as the picture book Keepers. Kizzy Ann Stamps is her first middle-grade novel. She is currently an assistant professor at Lynchburg College.
Jeri will be a speaker at the 2012 JRW Annual Conference. She recently shared how this event contributed to her writing career.More
Jason Tesauro co-authored with Phineas Mollod The Modern Gentleman: A Guide to Essential Manners, Savvy & Vice; The Modern Lover: A Playbook for Suitors, Spouses & Ringless Carousers; and The Modern Gentleman Second Edition. As contributor to The New York Times and Sommelier Journal, Jason is also an award-winning journalist and his lifestyle columns have appeared in Men’s Health, Maxim, The Sunday Paper in Atlanta, and Richmond Magazine. He’s also a guest expert on the TBS show Trends With Benefits.
For his testimonial, Jason waxes poetic about James River Writers and the value of literary arts in Richmond:
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In a deep hole I had been living 12 years. And I had climbed up out of that hole, and it was a long way upward, that climb. Looking back is scary: the depth of that hole. We’ll be nice and call it the “cave.”
By 2008, when brain damage had finally been diagnosed and treated, I regained my focus to finish the manuscript of a book begun many years before.
I learned to send an e-mail, and even an attachment, and this constituted my social contact with the world. Then Sarah and I heard about a writers’ group in Richmond called James River Writers. More
Lee Gimpel is a freelance writer and past treasurer, vice chair, and chair of James River Writers’ board of directors. He has covered business, technology and the intersection thereof for such publications as Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Inc., Worth and BusinessWeek SmallBiz. In addition, his articles about culture, lifestyle, travel and history have appeared in Budget Travel, Executive Traveler, Men’s Journal and the Washington Post. His first book, Fighting Wars, Planning for Peace, recounts the life of Gen. George C. Marshall and the Marshall Plan.