VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

Join Marsha Cook and V S Grenier on  September 7- 10AM PST 11AM EST NOON PST 1PM EST as they welcome Barbara Rogan. Barbara has had an incedible career and she is still doing so many things to help writers. This is going to be a great show that will be both entertaing and very informative. BARBARA began her publishing career with Fawcett Books before moving to Israel. One year later she established the Barbara Rogan Literary Agency, which specialized in representing American and European publishers and agents for Hebrew-language rights. With a few years the agency had become the largest in the country, supplying over 60% of the large Israeli market for translated books. During this period Barbara served on the Board of Directors of the Jerusalem Book Fair. Her first novel, Changing States , was published simultaneously in England, the U.S., and Israel. Shortly after its publication, she sold the literary agency and returned to New York.  Since then she’s published se

I originally became a writer by default. With no regard for the well-being of my family I trained as a classical pianist, subjecting all around me to four hours of practice a day. I suspect the pterodactyls that landed in my stomach before public concerts had something to do with not taking up a career as a concert pianist. Instead, I found myself learning how to put rear ends on concert hall seats, otherwise known as orchestral management. My first job in that heady field entailed writing the program notes for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC. Now, that was a job made in heaven. I wallowed in the music section of the Library of Congress and luxuriated in the incredible privilege of being allowed to take books home to read. The research was as much fun as writing the notes, if not more so. My job was to write such compelling notes about the music on the concert program that audiences would actually want to read them before scanning the donor lists to see who may

Author Maggie Lyons, born in Wales and brought up in England, zigzagged her way through a motley variety of careers from orchestral management to law-firm media relations to academic editing. Writing and editing nonfiction for adults brought plenty of satisfaction but nothing like the magic she discovered in writing fiction and nonfiction for children. Sometimes, asking authors what inspires them is like asking how they got their big toes. They don´t know. The toes just sprouted. Some ideas fly in from outer space. Some pop up if they ask the what-if questions: What if he did that? What if she said that? Maggie Lyons can say with some certainty about her middle-grade adventure story Vin and the Dorky Duet is she wanted to write a quest story, that very old genre describing the exploits of an optimistic adventurer who sets out on an apparently impossible mission. "I´m addicted to challenges—which I admit I don´t always meet," said Lyons. Challenges are someth

Alyce Joy was blessed with four children for whom she composed bedtime verses every night. That inspired her to publish a children’s book of prayers, entitled, “Priceless Gems.” When her children were grown, she began to write stories for her grandchildren. Always fascinated with arts and crafts, she taught herself the art of pyrography. This fired her imagination, and she started burning life-sized pictures of wildlife onto all the doors of her home. Her wood burnings are scattered through the U.S. and Canada. After deciding to put away her burning tools and torches, she enrolled in, and graduated from the Institute of Children’s Literature. VS: Thank you for taking time to be here today, Alyce. To get things started is your family supportive of your writing? Alyce Joy: Very! When I enrolled in the Children’s Institute of Literature, it was near Christmas. My goodness, they bought (My Family) me everything I could possibly need.   A friend gave me her old compute