Lesbian Authors to Take Rehoboth Beach by Storm
Each year, the literary component of the CAMP Rehoboth Women’s FEST gets stronger and stronger. For 2014, Bywater Books authors Ellen Hart, Marianne K. Martin, and Paula Martinac will be headlining the FEST, doing readings and panels at the Saturday, April 12 Convention Center program.
Joining the three Bywater Books authors at Proud, as well as selling their books at the Convention Center, will be mystery writer Jesse Chandler, Fiction writer RE Bradshaw and authors Ann McMan and Salem West.
A&M Books’ Fay Jacobs has been organizing the literary offerings at the FEST for several years. “The authors coming to town for 2014 represent several Lambda Literary award winners and hugely popular authors eager to discover Rehoboth and introduce Women’s FEST attendees to their words.”
At the Saturday conference, prolific mystery writer Ellen Hart, will do a session giving readers a peek at the life of a mystery writer. Author of thirty crime novels, Hart is a five-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery, a three-time winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Best Popular Fiction, a three-time winner of the Golden Crown Literary Award, and was made an official GLBT Literary Saint at the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival in New Orleans in 2005.
Also on Saturday, a session called The Book’s the Thing! will be moderated by Jacobs and will welcome Ellen Hart, Marianne K. Martin, Paula Martinac, and Jessie Chandler.
On Saturday afternoon, at CAMP Rehoboth, Paula Martinac will present The Magical History Tour: Finding Our Lesbian Past, with panelists Ellen Hart and Marianne K. Martin.
Marianne Martin published her first book, Legacy of Love, with the legendary Naiad Press. She was a Lambda Literary Award finalist for her novel Mirrors and has subsequently been a finalist two more times.
Mystery writer Jesse Chandler, won the 2012 Ann Bannon Popular Choice Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society for Bingo Barge Murder and a Bronze Independent Publishers Book Award for the second book in her series, Hide and Snake Murder.
Joining the Bywater Books headliners at Proud on Friday will be authors RE Bradshaw, Ann McMan and Salem West.
R. E. Bradshaw, a North Carolina native now makes her home in Oklahoma with her wife of 25 years. She is the proud mother of Jon, a very fine young man raised by lesbians. (Authors note: “Bite me, Family Research Council.”) Her latest release, The Rainey Season, follows Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Rainey Nights. Bradshaw is also a 2013 Lambda Literary Finalist with the mystery, Molly: House on Fire.
Ann McMan is the author of three novels, Jerico, Dust, and Aftermath. In 2012, she was awarded the Alice B. Lavender Certificate. Her short stories in the book Sidecar won a Rainbow Award for Best Contemporary Lesbian Fiction and a GCLS award for Best Short Story or Collection.
Salem West, a forty-something, well-respected literary critic is long-time author of the Rainbow Reader. She and her wife Ann McMan have just collaborated on the novel Hoosier Daddy.