Linda Jencson has a BFA in Fine Arts Photography and a Doctorate in Cultural Anthropology. She teaches Cultural Anthropology, North American Indians, and sometimes Archaeology, and Magic Witchcraft and Religion at Appalachian State University. She publishes scholarly articles on popular culture, comparative religion, and disaster response. All of her work revolves around the ways in which symbols can be used to motivate coordinated social action.

Bill Kaiser has conducted seminars and work shops in Write Your Memoir, Research for Fiction and Non-Fiction Stories, and How to Write Historical Fiction. He has an extensive record of writing news reports, magazine articles and "how to" instructions. He has contributed to books and manuals on Corporate Public Relations, Aerospace Reporting and Travel Writing.

In the past 10 years, as a member of the High Country Writers group, he has critiqued and edited hundreds of pages of manuscripts.

Since retiring to the mountains of Northwest North Carolina, Bill has pursued his long-time interest in the American Civil War with extensive research into life during the 1860s in Western  North Carolina, Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee.

His historical fiction novel "Bloodroot" tells the story of the clash of ideologies that brought war, murder, robbery, rape and genocide to Southern Appalachian mountain folk. The novel is scheduled for publication in mid-2007. A sequel "Night Riders" is in development for publication in 2008/2009.

Nora Percival's long career as editor and administrator often provided her with opportunities for public speaking. But now her talks are about the two memoirs which have been published in the past five years. She has spoken to many book and women's clubs and book fairs, and recently to English classes at a community college.

            Because her books are about periods which have now passed into history, the talks provide a window into those troubled times. Her firstwork, Weather of the Heart, is about her childhook in Russia during the early years of the Bolshevik Revolution and her difficult jorney to America at the age of eight. Percival writes movingly about her family life and how drastically it changed under the new totalitarian regime, and translates much of the drama into her talks. Her parent, cousins and especially Babushka, her beloved grandmother, come to vibrant life as we share their tribulations and small triumphs against famine and anxiety.

             Percival found, in her first book. an act of resurrection for those she had lost, so she knew she had to write her second memoir, Silver Pages on the Lawn. It tells the poignant love story of two students at Columbia University in New York during the difficult days of the great Depression of the 1930s, in the troubled years before World War II. Because it was over two years before they could be married, the young lovers wrote hundreds of letters about their lives and the world in which they lived. We share their tribulations and longings, their happy married life which they finally achieved, and the abrupt ending of their story.

            Percival can speak about either of these two historic eras or both, with emphasis in either the human stories or the life of the time, and is competent to address small or large groups, live or through the media (TV or radio). An interview with her granddaughter was excerpted on NPR last summer, and produced enthusiastic responses from her hearers.

            The author may be reached by E-mail at percival@goboone.net  or by phone at 828-297-2828.