“The hard emotional truths go down easily amid the smart, rapid-fire wit. A pure if heartbreaking pleasure.” These are the Booklist reviewer’s insightful comments about Friends Like Us, the newest
novel by Lauren Fox. Her earlier novel, Still Life with Husband, has also received critical acclaim. Fox has in addition written about her family’s history and the Holocaust. She currently lives in Milwaukee with her husband and two daughters.
At the 2013 Southeast Festival of Books, Kathie Giorgio will debut her novel, Learning to Tell (A Life) Time which is the sequel to her 2011 award winning The Home for Wayward Clocks. In 2012, Giorgio wrote Enlarged Hearts. Giorgio will also provide the Friday evening keynote address and appear in discussions throughout the Festival. Giorgio’s poems and short stories have been published in more than 60 literary magazines with new stories to appear in Magnolia: A Journal of Women’s Socially Engaged Literature, Clockhouse Review, Edge (Tahoe Writers Group), Glassworks, and Meat For Tea. Giorgio has been nominated twice for the Million Writer Award and twice for the Best of the Net anthology, with the latest being for her short story, “Getting Lucky.” Giorgio is the director and founder of AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop, a creative writing studio. She also teaches for Writers’ Digest and serves on their advisory board.
Andrea Lochen is a member of the English Department at UW-Waukesha. Her first novel The Repeat Year was published in May 2013. Kirkus Review praised it as “. . . a debut novel that offers a 
fascinating glimpse into one woman’s opportunity to rewrite her past and change her future.” Intending her book to be of interest to readers of both sexes, she sought to understand what differentiates general literature from “women’s fiction” in the minds of publishers. Lochen will share her insights into marketing strategies and stereotypes common in the book industry.
Award-winning author Kelly Moran has been known to say that she gets her ideas from everyone and everything around her, and that there’s always a book playing out in her head. Her books have not only received honors from the top review sites, but from NY Times bestsellers as well. Recent novels include The Drake House, Summer’s Road, and When the Leaves Stop Falling. She is a respected reviewer and a Romance Writers of America member.