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Rebecca Pratt Literary Group Clients
Judy Light Ayyildiz has an MALS and an MA in Creative Writing from Hollins University. She has taught creative writing for more than 20 years. Her poetry books SMUGGLED SEEDS won "The Gusto Press Discovery Award" and MUD RIVER (Lintel) was praised by William Packard and Fred Chappell. She co-authored CREATIVE WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM and EASY IDEAS FOR BUSY TEACHERS (Frank Schaffer) and THE WRITER'S EXPRESS (T. S. Denison).  She was an editor for Artemis literary magazine for 13 years. Her short stories, non-fiction, reviews, and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals, anthologies and magazines. Her cross-cultural memoir NOTHING BUT TIME was nominated for Best of the Year by the VA College Bookstores Assn. "Daughters of Ataturk" award recipient, Judy gives speeches about Turkish women and their culture. WIFE OF THE REVOLUTION is her first novel.
Richard P Bowles Jr, MD was raised the eldest of four brothers in Liberty, Missouri near Kansas City.  He was a scholar-athlete and attended William Jewell College there in Liberty.  He played basketball.  He eventually found his way to the state medical school in Columbia where he met Julia.  They married then moved to Hershey, Pennsylvania during his residency years (Penn State).  Returning to Missouri then, they took up residence in West Plains, in the Ozarks, in 1985.  They have stayed there and he has had the same office ever since.  He and "Judy" have had four remarkable children.  It is of this enchanting rural community, his medical practice there, and his family that he writes.
A native of Montreal, Canada, Jason Carter lived most of his life in the United States. For almost thirty years, California was where he called home; growing up and living in such areas as Torrance, Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, Long Beach, Lakewood, and parts of Orange County. In 2004, after spending several years in the Los Angeles music scene, fronting his band and touring high profile Hollywood clubs, Jason traded his guitar and microphone for pen and paper, focusing mostly on creating biography pages for the websites of the many local bands and musicians he’d performed with. The following year, Jason moved from Los Angeles. to Arizona and exchanged band biographies for full blown novels. After penning several books during his two years in the desert, Jason moved to Tennessee where he is currently residing.
Frank Cavallo was born in New Jersey in 1972. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Film & Television at Boston University in 1994.  After working for several years in film and video post-production in New York City, he left the business for law school.  He earned a J.D. in 2000 at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and studied international law at St. Petersburg State University, Russia. He is a criminal defense attorney at the Cuyahoga County Public Defender Office, and lives in Lakewood, Ohio. THE LUCIFER MESSIAH is his first novel.
Emily Cena is a retired 44-year-old lawyer who has a home in the U.S. Virgin Islands and in the mountains of North Carolina.  She was a partner with the law firm of Shook, Hardy & Bacon in Kansas City, Missouri until 1995 when she and her husband moved to the tiny tropical island of St. John.  She attended William Jewell College on a full academic scholarship, majored in English Literature, and graduated magna cum laude in 1982.  While in college she spent her sophomore year studying at St. Peter’s College, Oxford University, on an honors program.  At Oxford she was stroke of the St. Peter’s Ladies Racing Eight and captain of the Oxford University Ladies Judo Team, as well as a member of the Law Society and the Oxford Union.  She attended law school at the University of Virginia and the University of Kansas, where she graduated in 1986 and was a member of the Kansas Law Review.  She joined Shook, Hardy & Bacon in 1986 and became the first female partner in the Corporate Finance division, specializing in mergers and acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and capital market finance.  On St. John Ms. Cena has served as a member of the board of the Historical Society and the Friends of the St. John Library, and she and her husband crew on the legendary gaff-rigged sailboat Breath.
Pamela Chillemi -Yeager holds a Master's in Social Work from Temple University. After fifteen years in the field of human services, she now devotes her time to writing about the human experience.  Her fiction has appeared in numerous independent press magazines such as Terminal Fright, Deathrealm, After Hours and Daughters of Nyx, edited by acclaimed fantasy writer Kim Antieau, as well as the Bram Stoker nominated CD "Personal Demons." She received an Honorable Mention in St. Martin's Press World's Best Fantasy & Horror, Volume VIII. After residing for twenty years in the heart of PA Dutch Country, Pam and her family recently relocated to beautiful Charlotte, North Carolina. The family's  Sheltie, Frasier, continues to run in circles at the sound of motorcycles.
Chris Ewing grew up in the foothills of Western Nebraska within sight of the Oregon Trail and this early background has influenced much of his writing. Now a computer specialist, Chris enjoys writing, history, religion, astronomy, making wine and genealogy. He is also the author of a humorous non-fiction book about parenting (AN OWNER'S GUIDE TO FATHERHOOD, by Promise Press/Barbour Publishing, 2000).
Wendy Fiore grew up in Connecticut.  Having attended three colleges in the Nutmeg State, she holds three degrees and certifications in education.  She has taught elementary and middle school for seventeen years and presently is a Reading and Language Arts Consultant.  Having traveled a great deal as a college athlete, she found that there is no place like home.  Her love for New England and its majestic beauty, along with its quaint charm, comes through in her writing.  She remains in Connecticut with her husband, David, and their three ever-moving yet delightfully loving children, her beloved Samoyeds, and two spoiled cats.
Joseph Geringer, a communications consultant in Chicago, has studied the Lincoln assassination for 30 years. He has authored a biography of John Wilkes Booth for CourtTV and a two-act play entitled, All Them Damn Booths Are Crazy!, about the theatrical Booth family of Bel Air, Md. As well, he is a member of the Washington-based Surratt Society, which investigates ever-changing conspiracy theories. Among other works are a screenplay on Prohibition bandit Pretty Boy Floyd for Brian Zinnikas Productions and a serio-comedy entitled Near To Me--An Irish Gangster’s Love Story. Away from the keyboard, Joseph teaches creative writing and manages a community theatre group.
James Grundvig has more than 15 years of experience in the field of project/change management in the construction industry, two years as a manager of business development for a consulting engineering firm, and three years as an entrepreneur of an independent film company. The common thread of these diverse business ventures has been research and writing: From writing technical reports on construction problems to tailoring business plans with a vision.  The author is creative and detail oriented. He majored in Civil Engineering at the University of Hartford, where he discovered his interest in writing.  He attended Bennington Writers Workshop at Bennington College in Vermont.  He has researched and written three novels, four screenplays, three business plans, one play which was performed by the Rockaway Theater Company at the Viking Sail 2000 millennium celebration in New York City, and since 2003 has published a dozen letters-to-the-editors in major newspapers, including the :New York Times, the Sunday Times Magazine, and two in the Wall Street Journal, as well as write the monthly series on autism for the Epoch Times. (www.theepochtimes.com).  His wife is a nurse with 20 years experience at Mt. Sinai.
Fred Heffner, Ed.D. is a semi-retired teacher. The last teaching assignment was in the MBA program for St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.He has taught English at the high school and college levels, and developed and directed a Microcomputer LearningCenter (Albright College, Reading PA). In addition to presently working part-time as a business consultant, he has been a Volunteer at the Reading Public Museum for the past 15+ years.
Donna Michele Hill has an English Honours BA and a Teaching ESL Certificate. As a member of the Editor’s Association of Canada, she has edited three anthologies: two fictions and one poetry, and is co-creator and poetry editor of Erosha, an online literary journal of sensual muse and artwork. Her poems and book reviews have been published internationally in a number of journals and anthologies. Donna’s chapbook, AS GIRLFRIENDS WILL, AS WOMEN DO, was released by Plowman Press in 2002 and her latest, DRIVING THROUGH BAGHDAD, was published by Little Poem Press in 2004. Her poetry site can be found at www.donnamichelehill.com.
Sherry Karasik is an internationally published writer, award-winning poet, and journalist, whose work has appeared in the book IN THE COMPANY OF WOMEN by Brenda Hunter, PH.D, WRITING FROM LIFE: TELLING YOUR SOUL'S STORY by Susan Wittig Albert, PH.D., and literary journals, Journal of New Jersey Poets, and Idiom.  Her feature articles have appeared in such magazines as The World & I, DAD, BRIDE, New Jersey Woman, Digit, Skylands, Montage, to name a few, and newspapers The Christian Science Monitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Norway Times and is a regular contributor to The Star Ledger and The New Jersey Herald.  She’s been a news correspondent for APBnews, a partner with CNBC and MSNBC. Her assignments have taken her to Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm, England, Wales, Ireland, Italy, Estonia, Russia, Siberia, Switzerland, Pakistan, Iceland, Africa, Norway, Scotland, Canada and Germany. She has led adult writing workshops in Manhattan, at Skidmore College, her alma mater, and Sussex County Community College.  She is currently enrolled in the Masters of Divinity Program at Drew Theological Seminary, in Madison, New Jersey, pursuing ordination with the Presbyterian church.   Karasik, president of Best-Seller, Inc., lives in Stillwater, New Jersey with her husband and three children.  Theology and terror intersect her recent novel, The PATH OF INCORRUPTIBLE LIGHT.
Kathleen M. King is a recovering perfectionist who is dedicated to living the second half of her life with joy, spontaneity and wonder. She has developed and taught numerous courses on professional and personal development including: journaling, creative thinking, time management, creative writing, and rethinking the possibilities in your life.  Ms. King is the author of numerous short stories, a young reader's fantasy trilogy and a book of meditations.  She has worked in the fields of education, journalism and business. Currently she is the Director of Consultation and Education for the Lancaster County (PA) Office of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. She and her husband, Dana, are parents of two grown children and two small grandchildren who bring a great deal of messy joy to her life.
Hugh Mannfield is  an aerospace engineer living in the Pacific Northwest.  He was raised in the in American west from Texas to Wyoming and points between during the era of moon landings and space shuttle launches.  Hugh earned a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wyoming and after graduation he moved to the Pacific Northwest to follow a career in aerospace.  Since then he has worked on several large military and commercial aircraft as well as parts of the space station. Hugh dabbled with writing in high school and college but began writing seriously while working with NASA, doing design descriptions and operation instructions for the space station.  He couldn’t stop his imagination from leaping from the technology of today to the applications of tomorrow and started writing fiction on the side.  Hugh continues to write while providing engineering services for commercial aviation. A long time student of the physical sciences, Hugh strives to bring science fact to science fiction and avoids the use of magical technology, believing that real science can be as exciting as fantasy technology.   He enjoys life in the Northwest with his wife and two daughters and plans to continue the story he began in A PLACE TO BE FREE.

Geoff Nelder, after teaching for 30 years is now a freelance writer and editor living in the UK. He won a commendation in the Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Competition. Geoff won the 2005 & 2006 short story competitions at Café Doom, and won a Silver Award for best unpublished novel at a Netherlands academy in 2007. Geoff was the lead scriptwriter for an experimental Internet TV sitcom and is an editor for Adventure Books of Seattle, co-editing the science fiction print and ebook magazine, Escape Velocity. He had a humorous thriller, ESCAPING REALITY, published in 2005. Two of his novels are being published in 2008: HOT AIR, a thriller and EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEE, a science fiction. LEFT LUGGAGE, a science fiction trilogy, is ready to go, and XAGHRA'S REVENGE, a fantasy based on a real event on Gozo in 1551, is a work in progress. Geoff is a member of the British Science Fiction Association, the British Fantasy Society and the Society of Authors.

John J. Reiner was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. After Reiner graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in Psychology and bombed out after completing two years of medical school at the U.C.L.A. School of Medicine, he sold coffee makers and vacuum cleaners. Tiring of the long hours, unpleasant people, and tiny remuneration, he went to law school, and he graduated from the U.S.C. School of Law. After passing the bar examinations in California and Arizona, Reiner worked for a large law firm, which ultimately imploded. He then started his own practice and for the next 15 years specialized in medical malpractice and entertainment litigation. Because of his success against a huge entertainment conglomerate, one of his experts in that case referred to him Erin Brockovich’s ex-husband; Brockovich was the lynchpin that lead to Reiner’s first book, LOCKDOWN--ADVENTURES IN INCARCERATION. Reiner is currently working on his second book, which explores from the inside out the rot that pervades the entire legal system. As frequently mentioned in LOCKDOWN, John is married to Donna, and they have an outsized—but not overweight—alleged Yorkie, named Manny. Reiner is currently working as a SAG/AFTRA "featured extra" and as a proofreader.

Dr. David Ryback is associate editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and has been book critic for a number of magazines. He is on the editorial board of Georgia Psychologist, and has been book columnist for Speaker, the magazine of the National Speakers Association, with a distribution of over 5,000 to the most influential speakers across the globe. One of his very well received presentations enacts scenes from his book, SUCH SWEET THUNDER, and is accompanied by his performance of the "Moonlight Sonata."  Another talk for writers reveals the most creative and effective ways to write and structure successful books.  
Dr. Ryback is the author of over 60 professional articles and innumerable book reviews in such publications as Psychology Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Creative Loafing, AHP Perspective, Business to Businessmagazine among others. He has been a professor at the University of Maryland (Overseas Division), the University of West Georgia, Georgia State University and Emory University. He earned his B.Sc. with Honors in Psychology at McGill University, his M.S. at San Diego State, and his Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of DREAMS THAT COME TRUE (Doubleday, 1988), LOOK 10 YEARS YOUNGER/LIVE 10 YEARS LONGER (Prentice Hall, 1995), PUTTING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE TO WORK (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1998), and co-author OF PSYCHOLOGY OF CHAMPIONS (Praeger, 2008).
On a regular basis, Dr. Ryback performs on the piano for special occasions.  His favorite piece is Beethoven’s "Moonlight Sonata."  A play he wrote, based on the life of Beethoven—"The Triumph of Passion"—was produced a few years ago in Atlanta and at North Highlands University in New Mexico.  Dr. Ryback also offers selections of his Beethoven book as dramatic presentations to various groups.
He’s been a keynote presenter to such groups as the Federal National Mortgage Association in Washington, DC; RTM in Atlanta, Ga.; MontCap in Montreal, Canada; a number of educational organizations; and others.  As well, he has spoken to industrial and educational groups in Montreal, Canada; Monterrey, Mexico; Valencia, Spain; Nuremberg, Germany; Livorno, Italy; Oslo, Norway; Tel Aviv, Israel; Bangkok, Thailand; and Tokyo, Japan.   A year ago, he made a presentation on platform excellence to the annual convention of the National Speakers Association in San Diego.
"Bert" Schulz is a software engineer, having worked for the government, Boeing and the military. Most recently, she has worked for a company that maps the ocean floor with sonar and takes vessels out all over the world. Her short suspense stories have appeared in numerous magazines in the Northwest.

Bryan Sobolewski lives in Nahant, Massachusetts where he works in the fitness industry, finding it best suited for avoiding the felony question on most job applications. He holds an Associates Degree in Human Services, a Bachelor’s in Psychology, and a Personal Trainer Certification through The America Council on Exercise. When he’s not writing or training clients, Bryan likes to hike, train his Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and update his blog, (www.changeisoptional.blogspot.com). 

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Ed Teja is a musician, novelist, poet, and a sailor. He lived on a boat in the Caribbean (mostly Venezuela) for nine years with his artist wife, Dagny Sellorin, and JoSahn ("Good Morning" in Cantonese) the wonder dog. His first novel THE LEGEND OF RON AÑEJO (NovelBooks, Inc), published in 2003, told the humorous story of the world's best Caribbean boat bum. They have also worked and lived in Hong Kong and the US. Since 1995 Teja has written satire about boating and sailors for CARRIBBEAN COMPASS, a monthly publication for people who live on boats and sail up and down the Caribbean islands—or wish they did. He has published poetry in "Capper’s," "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine," "ART:MAG," "Whistling Shade," "Japanophile," and many other magazines, as well as appearing on many online publications. He has reviewed books for The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, Midwest Review of Books, and recently published a fictional review of a nonexistent book of formal poetry in the journal "Whistling Shade." His short stories and articles have been in publications ranging from "Galaxy," "Galileo," "Science Fiction Times" and "Doppelganger" to "New England Business," and "BYTE" magazine. He is also the author of five technical books and the HeathKit Voice Synthesis course. To support his writing habit, he has produced two blues CDs and performs anywhere they will pay enough to make it worthwhile showing up. TV Ontario featured him in September of 2001 and in May 2003 he opened the acoustic day at the Silver City Blues Festival. He currently works and lives on a small Cay in The Bahamas.

Stephen Tobias grew up on the Lower East Side of New York and attended Seward Park High School where he was expected to follow in the long literary tradition of his vibrant city. Oddly his journey was suspended, and he graduated from Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Tobias has had a long, diverse career as a family practice physician and specialist in addictive diseases. After a long hiatus he has returned to writing and has found that a lifetime spent talking and listening to patients from all backgrounds and walks of life has provided him with the insights and experiences he lacked as a younger man.

 Wayne Waverly has been writing fiction literally since first learning the alphabet--though it took him a little while to perfect his craft and submit to his “calling.” He has worked a wide variety of jobs (dishwasher, bulldozer operator, fast food cook, machinist and corrections officer, among others) but found satisfaction in none. One year away from a degree in English Literature, he dropped out of college to begin work on his first novel, THE CHOSEN. When not busy writing, he also works as a Christian youth counselor. He is actively involved with Greenpeace, The Ocean Conservancy and Amnesty International. He is an honorary member of the Cherokee Nation, was born in the summer of 1971, and has lived his entire life on top of a mountain in northern Alabama.

© Copyright 2006-2008, Rebecca S. Pratt
http://agentr.com/bios.html (07/08)