Meal Events
PLA Conference meal events include several author luncheons and the Audio Publishers Association Dinner. These events are always in high demand and are among the first to sell out, so get your tickets early!
Preconference Author Luncheon with Patrick Somerville
Tuesday, March 23 Noon - 2 p.m.
Patrick Somerville grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and later earned his MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. He is the author of the story collection Trouble (Vintage, 2006), and his writing has appeared in One Story, Epoch and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007. He lives with his wife in Chicago, and is currently the Blattner Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern University.
Young Adult Author Luncheon with Virginia Euwer Wolff
Thursday, March 25 Noon - 2 p.m.
Virginia Euwer Wolff is the distinguished author of six books for young readers. Her books have won the National Book Award, the Michael L. Printz Honor, the Golden Kite Award, the International Reading Association Children's Book Award, the Jane Addams Book Award, the PEN-West Book Award, and the Oregon Book Award, among many other honors. After graduating from Smith College, Ms. Wolff attended graduate schools in four states, worked as an English teacher, and raised two children before becoming a full-time writer. An accomplished violinist and proud grandmother, she lives in her native Oregon in a house in the woods outside Portland.
Adult Author Luncheon to feature Scott Turow
Thursday, March 25 Noon - 1:45 p.m.
Scott Turow is a writer and attorney. He is the author of several best-selling novels: Presumed Innocent (1987), The Burden of Proof (1990), Pleading Guilty (1993), The Laws of Our Fathers (1996), Reversible Errors (2002) and Ordinary Heroes (2005). A novella, Limitations, was published as a paperback original in November 2006 by Picador following its serialization in The New York Times Magazine. His works of nonfiction include One L (1977) about his experience as a law student, and Ultimate Punishment (2003), a reflection on the death penalty. He frequently contributes essays and op-ed pieces to publications such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Atlantic. Mr. Turow's books have won a number of literary awards, including the Heartland Prize in 2003 for Reversible Errors and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 2004 for Ultimate Punishment and Time Magazine's Best Work of Fiction, 1999, for Personal Injuries. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages, sold more than 25 million copies world-wide and have been adapted into one full length film and two television miniseries. His latest novel, Innocent, will be published in Mary 2010. This event will require an additional fee.
Audio Publishers Association Dinner with Chelsea Cain, Sue Grafton, Judy Kaye, and Marcia Muller
Thursday, March 25 6 - 8:30 p.m.
Chelsea Cain - Chelsea Cain lived the first few years of her life on an Iowa commune, then grew up in Bellingham, Washington, where the infamous Green River Killer was "the boogeyman" of her youth. Her first two novels featuring Detective Archie Sheridan and serial killer Gretchen Lowell, Heartsick and Sweetheart, were both New York Times bestsellers. Also the author of
Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, a parody based on the life of Nancy Drew, and several nonfiction titles, she lives in Portland, Oregon. Her most recent novel,
Evil at Heart, will be released in September 2009.
Sue Grafton and
Judy Kaye - With net sales of over 1.75 million copies in combined audio formats, Sue Grafton and Judy Kaye are audio publishing phenomenons. Demand continues to be strong for the Kinsey Millhone mysteries, with the last three titles in the series (
R is for Ricochet,
S is for Silence, and
T is for Trespass) netting over 100,000 each and spending months on The New York Times fiction and Publishers Weekly audio bestseller lists. Grafton says, "My audiobook 'readers' are absolutely convinced that Judy Kaye is Kinsey Millhone in the flesh. I've acquired thousands of new converts to the books from people who hear them first. It's a wonderful form of literary crosspollination." Grafton and Kaye return with another gripping audiobook in the wildly successful Alphabet Series,
U Is for Undertow, available in December 2009.
Marcia Muller - A native of the Detroit area, Marcia Muller has authored more than 35 novels, three in collaboration with husband Bill Pronzini, seven short-story collections, and numerous nonfiction articles. Together she and Pronzini have edited a dozen anthologies and a nonfiction book on the mystery genre. In 2005 Muller was named a Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America, the organization's highest award. Pronzini was named Grand Master in 2008, making them the only living couple to share the award. The Mulzinis, as friends call them, live in Sonoma County, California, in yet another house full of books. Her next novel,
Locked In, will be available in October 2009. PLA thanks the Audio Publishers Association, MacMillan Audio, BBC Audiobooks America, and Books on Tape for sponsorship of this event.
Children's Author Luncheon to feature Kadir Nelson
Friday, March 26 Noon - 1:45 p.m.
The PLA 2010 Children's Author Luncheon will feature
Kadir Nelson, the widely acclaimed illustrator of many books for children, including
Thunder Rose, written by Jerdine Nolen, which received a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award;
Ellington Was Not a Street, written by Ntozake Shange, which received a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award;
Hewitt Anderson's Great Big Life, written by Jerdine Nolen, which won the 2005 Society of Illustrators Gold Medal, and
Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, written by Carol Boston Weatherford which received a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, a Caldecott Honor, and an NAACP Image Award. He is also the illustrator of Deloris Jordan and Roslyn M. Jordan's
Salt in His Shoes, and Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee's
Please, Baby, Please and
Please, Puppy, Please. Nelson's authorial debut,
We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, was a New York Times bestseller, a Society of Illustrators Silver Medalist and it won the Silbert Medal, the Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the Coretta Scott King Illustrated Honor. He has recently created a book for Simon & Schuster called
Change Has Come: An Artist Celebrates Our American Spirit about the historic election of Barack Obama. This event will require an additional fee.
Adult Author Luncheon with Luis Alberto Urrea
Friday, March 26 Noon-2 p.m.
Luis Alberto Urrea, 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph.
The Devil's Highway, his 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert, won the 2004 Lannan Literary Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize. Urrea's first book,
Across the Wire, was named a New York Times Notable Book and won the Christopher Award. Urrea also won a 1999 American Book Award for his memoir,
Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life and, in 2000, he was voted into the Latino Literature Hall of Fame following the publication of
Vatos. His book of short stories,
Six Kinds of Sky, was named the 2002 small-press Book of the Year in fiction by the editors of ForeWord magazine. He also won a Western States Book Award in poetry for
The Fever of Being and was featured in the 1996 Best American Poetry collection. Urrea's
The Hummingbird's Daughter, is the culmination of 20 years of research and writing. The historical novel tells the story of Teresa Urrea, sometimes known as The Saint of Cabora and the Mexican Joan of Arc. His latest book,
Into the Beautiful North, demonstrates his "poetic sensibility and journalistic eye for detail in painting the Mexican landscape," according to Publisher's Weekly.
