Welcome to the Authors' Room...

Here you can read author bios, listen to a clip of the authors reading their own work, and purchase books and materials by using our convenient links.
Thank you for supporting the Arts and the Artists who make them!

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Evan Witmer

Tall Pennsylvania boy. Has a girlfriend named Kat and a cat named Hans. I was a SoundCloud rapper in a previous life. Fluoxetine, HCL 40 Mg, every morning. Risperidone, 1 Mg, every night. Author and webmaster for www.oddfiction.com/ where I post short stories for free! 
 
I also have a short story collection called “Pages from the Pizza Crows” available for purchase.  It's about a crow that delivers short stories to my windowsill in exchange for delicious pizza. The stories are all surrealist fantasy and deal with themes such as romantic baggage, agoraphobia, pregnant horses, and spying on people in the woods.

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Sue Partenheimer

After a forty-three year successful career as a medical technologist at the Altoona Hospital laboratory, Sue Partenheimer enters the world of fiction writing with a big wave of powerful stories about little marine conservationists who are busy taking care of the ocean and of each  other. Sue currently lives in Pennsylvania with her furry friends, both domestic and wild, who are a constant source of tales and inspiration. She continues to write and share new stories with the Altoona Writers Guild.
In the video, Sue shares how the sea creatures from The Castor Oil Rig Tales have helped her stay creative during the 2020 pandemic.

For publication information, visit:  https://www.abvpublishing.com

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Chris Rodell

Chris Rodell is the author of six books, the most recent being “Undaunted Optimist: Essays on Life, Laughter & Cheerful Perseverance.” Pennsylvania Gov, Tom Ridge says, “Rodell writes about life the way Sinatra sings about New York, unflinching about the gritty realities, but with abiding affection and relentless positivity abut the future.” 
               A freelance writer since 1992, Rodell, calls himself a “PROSE-titute,” joking that “he’ll write for anyone who pays him.” In fact, he’s often written for free if he thought it’d be fun. It’s how over the years he’s found himself rasslin’ alligators, racing Ferraris, jumping out of airplanes and in one week gaining 20 pounds eating like Elvis. 
                     Besides unconventional biographies on Fred Rogers and Arnold Palmer, his other books include “Use All The Crayons! The Colorful Guide To Simple Human Happiness,” and “The Last Baby Boomer: The Story of the Ultimate Ghoul Pool,” a 2016 satiric novel about the life and death of the last baby boomer (winner of the ’16 TINARA Award for best satire). 
Rodell lives in Latrobe with his wife Valerie, their daughters, Josie and Lucy, and a small, loud dog named Snickers.  
Fiction
Evan & Elle in Heaven & Hell:  A Long-Distance Social Media Afterlife Love Story (2020) 
The Last Baby Boomer: The Story of the Ultimate Ghoul Pool (2017)
Non-Fiction
Arnold Palmer: Homespun Stories of The King (2018)
Hole in One!  The Complete Book of Fact, Legend, and Lore on Golf’s Luckiest Shot (2003)
Other
Use All The Crayons!  The Colorful Guide to Simple Human Happiness (2012, 2018)
Chris blogs at …
www.EightDaysToAmish.com

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Michael Bourgo

Michael Bourgo started out to be a history teacher but ended up spending 34 years at IBM in sales and customer service. He began writing as a casual hobby some thirty years ago, but since retirement it has become a vocation that he pursues on a daily basis.

He divides his poetry into two broad categories: spontaneous and planned. "Spontaneous" poems are the ones that you will find in his first two collections, "Moments Past and Present" and "More Moments." These are mostly traditional lyric poems, centered on daily life, family, nature, and beliefs, arising from the thoughts and observations of every day.

His "planned" verse appears in two recent books. "Towards a More Perfect Union" is a set of 51 rhymed poems in a set format that profile each of the states and the District of Columbia. "The Grand Tour" describes each of the 50 capital cities of Europe in similar fashion. Although Michael has no plans to give up serious reflective poetry, he enjoyed the very different challenges of writing light verse in rhyme and sticking to a fixed format. Next on the horizon is "This Poem, That Poem," a collection of 64 short poems in the minute form covering a wide range of subjects and moods.

His other volume of verse, "The Years," is a set of 24 long poems on notable characters and events in the 19th century. It's a marriage of two lifelong interests-- poetry and history. In the works is "Modern Times," which carries the historical account forward into the 20th century.

"Once Upon a Time" is his first venture in prose. It is a memoir of his life from age 3 to 14, and one which began as a series of memory poems he wrote some years ago.

Michael is an active member of the writing community in State College PA. He has received several commissions from the Penn State Center for the Book, leads two local writing groups and teaches for the Penn State extension program. He has won first place in the Grand Prize contest of the Pennsylvania state poetry three times and finished first twice in the Iowa Poetry Association annual contest. His verse has appeared in a number of publications. You can see samples of his work at http://theseasonsandotherpoems.blogspot.com

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