The Storytellers

Lauren Marino is a writer and longtime publishing executive. Prior to her current roles as Executive Editor at Hachette Books she was VP, Editorial Director of Gotham Books, where she was the founding editor in 2001, publishing multiple bestsellers and award-winning books. She is the author of What Would Dolly Do? How to Be a Diamond in a Rhinestone World and Jackie and Cassini: A Fashion Love Aff...

Isla Morley grew up in South Africa during apartheid, the child of a British father and fourth-generation South African mother. In 1994 she was one of the youngest magazine editors in South Africa, but left career, country and kin when she married an American and moved to California. The Last Blue, her third novel, was selected by the Southern Fiction Review of Books as a “must-read” Best Book of...

SHOW NOTES: Susan Sammon has been a television studio manager, a food PR executive, environmental scuba diver, alternative educator and small business owner. As a result of her various jobs and interests, she has visited nearly 100 countries, touching down on all seven continents. Traveling for work and pleasure to exotic destinations, Susan had a unique opportunity to develop her image-making ski...

Dr. Ysaye M. Barnwell is a native New Yorker now living in Washington, DC she is the only child and perfect blend of her mother, a registered nurse and her father, a classical violinist. Dr. Barnwell studied violin beginning at age 2 ½, and majored in music through high school. With this background, she went on to earn the Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Speech Pathology (SUNY, Geneseo,...

Christina Hoag is a former journalist who has had her laptop searched by Colombian guerrillas, phone tapped in Venezuela, was suspected of drug trafficking in Guyana, hid under a car to evade Guatemalan soldiers, and posed as a nun to get inside a Caracas jail. She has interviewed gang members, bank robbers, thieves and thugs in prisons, shantytowns and slums, not to forget billionaires and presid...

A former English professor, Jeannee Sacken is a photojournalist who travels extensively in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, documenting the lives of women and children. She also presents the series, "Journeys to the Ends of the Earth," at schools and libraries. She recently published her first novel, suspenseful women's fiction, Behind The Lens, featuring Annie Hawkins Green, a war photographer ar...

Libby McNamee is an author, lawyer, and US Army Veteran. Her second novel, Dolley Madison and the War of 1812 published in August on the 207th anniversary of the burning of Washington City. Her first, Susanna’s Midnight Ride: The Girl Who Won the Revolutionary War was named #1 in Juvenile Fiction by the Independent Publisher Book Awards and Pinnacle Book Awards, and Finalist in Historical Fiction...