RSJ 2009 Authors & Guests

Keynote Speaker:

Leslie Esdaile (L.A. Banks) has penned over 30 novels and 11 novellas in a wide range of genres with her roots firmly in romance. She is the recipient of the 2008 Essence Magazine Storyteller of the Year Award. Under the pseudonyms; L.A. Banks, Leslie Esdaile, Leslie E. Banks, Leslie Banks, and Leslie Esdaile Banks, she has won several business as well as literary awards including the prestigious Emma award for outstanding romance. She writes in genres as diverse as romance, women’s fiction, crime suspense, and paranormal. She has contributed to magazines, newspaper columns, and has written commercial fiction for a variety of major publishers: St. Martin’s Press (NYC), Simon and Schuster (NYC), Kensington Publishing (NYC), BET/Arabesque (NYC), Genesis Press (MS), Parker Publishing, Harper, and Tor. Her non-fiction work includes the riveting and motivational story of Bank's life journey in her contribution to the Chicken Soup for the African American Soul anthology.

Currently Banks writes full-time, always working on multiple projects and anthologies simultaneously, and she resides in Philadelphia with her teenage daughter and her black Labrador retriever.
 http://www.leslieesdailebanks.com/.

Authors:

Agents:

TBA

Editors:

Deborah Johnson Schumaker is the Executive Editor of Genesis Press, Inc. After living for eighteen years in Italy, she returned to the United States in 2002 and resides in Columbus, Mississippi. Ms. Schumaker is also the author. Her latest hardcover (written as Deborah Johnson) is The Air Between Us and was published by Amistad/HarperCollins in 2008.

Tina Burns, Publisher for Liquid Silver Books, has been in the ePublishing industry for five years and an avid reader for as long as she can remember. She has experience as a proofreader, editor, Author, and Author PR. She lives in Arizona where she's a busy mother of two rowdy boys and happily married to her opposite.

Please note that this is a tentative list of guests and subject to change.