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April 23-25, 2027
Originally from Punta Gorda, FL, Jason Vuic is an award-winning author and historian based in Fort Worth, Texas, who specializes in creative nonfiction. He is the author of several books, including The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream (UNC Press, 2021), The Yucks! Two […]
Sheri Castle is the host of The Key Ingredient, a cooking show from PBS. She is also an award-winning professional food writer, recipe developer, and cooking teacher known for melding stories, humor, and culinary expertise. Sheri grew up in her beloved Blue Ridge Mountains and now lives in the NC Piedmont. Farmers markets, great stories, […]
Before Dana Brooks became an attorney, she was a paralegal, law firm administrator, mental health counselor and Florida Supreme Court certified family law mediator. Dana attended Pensacola Junior College and Tallahassee Community College before graduating Florida State University, cum laude, with a Bachelor of Science in Social Work. She later earned her Masters of Social […]
Jimmy Fasig is the leader of the Fasig Brooks personal injury division and lead trial counsel on most of its non-medical malpractice cases. In 2000, he started his law career as a paralegal for what was then Eubanks & Barrett. In his first full year as a lawyer, he litigated a case that resulted in […]
Originally from Torrington, Connecticut, LA transplant Sarah Barrios began writing songs when she was 13 “after a particularly boring day at home.” She hasn’t stopped writing since, exploring storytelling and the way music can transport listeners to a different world. Barrios draws from a vast spring of influences, from such authors as Jane Austen to […]
Alison J. Adderley is a Professor of Economics at Valencia College in Orlando, FL. Her academic career includes serving as an Academic Dean, Dean of Students and Collegewide Dean of Enrollment Management. She has degrees from Brown University and the University of South Florida, with doctoral work in Higher Education Administration. Outside of work and […]
Kaleb Thompkins is an emerging bassist from Tallahassee, Florida, whose musical journeybegan in his family’s church. His musical DNA is a fusion of jazz, R&B, funk, gospel, and hip-hop—each influenced by legends like B.B. King, James Brown, Donny Hathaway, Christian McBride, and Marvin Gaye. Currently pursuing a graduate degree in Jazz Performance at Florida State […]
Vincent Herring started playing saxophone at the age of 11 in school bands and studying privately at Dean Frederick’s School of Music in Vallejo, CA. At the age of 16, Herring was studying at California State University at Chico on a music scholarship. A year later he had won a berth in the United States Military Academy Band […]
Sid Bedingfield is co-editor and contributor to Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Demand for a New America. The collection, co-edited by Kathy Roberts Forde, examines the overlooked political influence of white journalists in the rise of Jim Crow rule in the New South – and how Black journalists fought valiantly to […]
A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the Columbia Journalism School, David Powell worked as a reporter for ten years, most of that with the Associated Press in New York, Miami, and Tallahassee. After earning a law degree from Florida State University, he practiced law for thirty years at the Tallahassee firm […]