Eduardo Alba
DEATH IN SPAIN
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1971, Eduardo Alba studied theatre and applied arts in Madrid and New York. Known for his definitively unique voice in the realm of magical realism, for the last seven years his theatrical plays have been produced throughout Spain, Latin America, Canada, and various counties throughout Europe. His editorial profiles of such film luminaries as Pedro Almadovar and Carmen Maura have appeared in publications on both sides of the Atlantic, and he is the recipient of the 2006 Latin American Esteemed Artists Society Prize for Cultural Achievement. His numerous books include Movies, Memories & Madrid, Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down: Spanish in the Dark, Electric Dreams of a Bordertown, and Santa Linda.
Frances Barker-Finch
THE HOCKNEY HABITAT
Artist and art critic Frances Barker-Finch has been published in Modern Style and has taught in London, Manchester, Brighton, and Cambridge as well. She has written extensively on the works of David Hockney for many museums and art publications throughout Europe and the United States. An avid multi-tasker, Barker-Finch is also a partner in Fascinators Fatale, a swiftly growing upscale designer hat company based in London. She is fond of comparing her made-to-order hats to the sculptural achievements of the Masters. Wouldn't Leonardo be shocked?! Born in Liverpool in 1973, she lives with her husband, well known industrial architect Kingsley Finch, and their four children, Lucy, Warren, Tessa, and Freddy, in East Grinstead, West Sussex.
Penelope Bates
FROM HURLEY TO HELL AND BACK
Penelope Bates has a wide experience in numerous aspects of the entertainment industry, including screenwriting, acting, and various production jobs up and down the food chain. She is a frequently sought after freelance writer and editor for several entertainment outlets in England, including OK!, Hello, and London Tonight. For five years she co-owned and managed a phenomenally (or as she says, "ridiculously") successful production services firm, renting equipment packages to film and television productions. Bates makes her home now in the American Pacific Northwest, where she is in the process of establishing a small game and wildlife preserve.
Samuel Bernstein
LULU
Born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1970, Samuel Bernstein is the award-winning author of Mr. Confidential, winner of a 2008 Hermes Award for Non-Fiction, which is now being adapted into a stage musical. He is the writer and producer of the Paramount and Showtime film Bobbie's Girl and the multi-festival award-winning Silent Lies, in addition to writing for various television series, and creating Kill Your Inner Child, the award-winning digital series for Hearst Entertainment. He is the winner of a Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association for his work on Uncommon Heroes. He is slightly ashamed to admit that he is about to launch a reality television show. Bernstein makes his home in West Hollywood, California, with husband Ronald Shore and their incorrigible miniature dachshunds.
Chaz Dano
F**KED UP FILMZ
The youngest author in the Walford Press family, Chaz Dano, born in 1988 to a decidedly unusual Leeds family, was "freaked out" by film from his first time at a cinema, seeing The Crying Game at the improbable age of four. A frequent Internet contributor on a disturbingly large number of sites, Dano makes his publishing debut with this unique memoir-cum-cinema/pyrotechnical experience that charts the drug-induced disintegration of his family by framing the downward spiral against the backdrop of the heightened violence in modern film. He will soon begin studying acting in the theatre programme of the University of Leeds, and happily cohabits with a ferret named Reservoir, several replaceable, flushable, goldfish, and a mongrel named Bailey.
Tessa Kincaid
BARRYMORE AND BEYOND
This isn't the first time Tessa Kincaid has taken on a world famous acting dynasty. Her unique take on the Redgrave clan in The Redgraves: Three Generations of Brilliance, rapidly became an authoritative reference guide to anyone interested in the great acting families. Turning her attention to the Barrymore family is a natural next step. Born in 1966 in London, Kincaid has been writing about entertainment and media for two decades; with published articles in L.A. Style, US Weekly, W.W.D., Vogue, and Interview. The Barrymore clan has given her a great deal of "meat" to sink her teeth into, never mind the fact that the Barrymores seemed less interested in meat, and more interested in alcohol. She now makes her home in New York with her wife (Vancouver, legal marriage, 2007, yes!) attorney Lorna Peterman.
Jamaica Lancaster
THE BALLET MONSTER
Born in the heart of London's East End in 1988, Jamaica Lancaster did not grow up in a family where classical dance was given any particular emphasis. Drunken grinding in the local pub was more like it. Yet the dance world coloured her thoughts from an early age. An injury at the age of sixteen cut short her own hopes for a ballet career and so it is that she turned to writing. Her first novel is an imagined (and imaginative) exploration of what it might be like if the ghostly, some might say rather ghastly, presence of George Balanchine were to attempt an assault on the present day world of ballet. Just how out-of-control and furious might the maestro be? Wanting every one of his dancers to look like a little boy is only the beginning....
Scott Pell
HALLUCINATIONS
Art, Alcoholism, Addiction and Grace. Scott Pell's new book is a sometimes hallucinogenic, always thoughtful take on what art in the Twenty-first century means. Never mind the fact that no one can quite be sure that art means anything at all! When, in Crowns and Crones, he wrote about the American South and its peculiar emphasis on the beauty pageant, which was hardly the first place one might find him, since he has spent much of his adult life earning advanced degrees in various sciences from M.I.T., Stanford, and the University of Michigan. Yet he came to writing the book, his publishing debut, from a childhood spent with a mother and four sisters who all came up through the pageant circuit. At once an appreciation and an investigation of the world of Little Dolls, Pell weaves the stories of a number of pageant kids into a vibrant narrative of love, loss, and cutthroat competition.
Pippa Rickenham
HEAVY METAL OPERA
Pippa Rickenham has been writing about the rock and roll world since she began creating various fanzines and websites starting at the age of thirteen. Innit. Back then her favourite singer, Morrissey, became something of an obsession, so much so that her mother and father threatened to ban any and all Morrissey posters from the family's four-bedroom semi in central Manchester. Later, her house-mates in London felt the exact same way. In addition to contributing to numerous music publications, and spending far too many nights in smoky clubs, Rickenham has written two books on the pop world, Gender Benders: A Trip Through 80s Insanity, and The Pistol Patrol.
Kathryn Ann Shipman
WHAT NO ONE KNOWS
Acclaimed author of Art & Other Lies, Kathryn Ann Shipman is a performance art phenomenon and mixed media visual artist of unusual intensity. She has outraged, amused, and entertained her many fans throughout the Commonwealth and in the United States. She is known for her flagrant commingling of sexual imagery and religious symbolism to give form to her vision of what it means to be a woman and an artist. Born in Toronto in 1983, Shipman legally emancipated herself from her parents at the age of fifteen, whereupon she began to form her own ideas about art and society whilst making her way in the world as a street performer. She still lives in Toronto in what she refers to as a polyamorous family of radical artists. It isn't Big Love but it's awfully close...
Tamzin Stillwater
ART SPACE
Born and raised in Sidney, Australia, Tamzin Stillwater takes on the art of science fiction, space exploration, and astrophysics. In Aussie Madness she explored the recent domination of the Hollywood box office by Australian actors in this definitive take on the rise of such superstars as Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Naomi Watts, Guy Pearce, and of course, Mel Gibson. Stillwater is a freelance writer and editor now living in New York with husband DeVon Johnson and newborn baby, Judi. Though happily immersed in the Big Apple, her Aussie roots remain quite strong. In addition to visiting family Down Under as much as possible, she came perilously close to naming her first daughter Kylie. And her second Dani. It's a disease.
Charles Takai
HONG KONG + BOLLYWOOD
Charles Takai is an internationally recognized and self-proclaimed Asian film fanatic. His articles have appeared in Worldpress, Ninja, and Masala. A frequent Internet blog and podcast contributor, he is mildly surprised at finding himself living and working in Liverpool at the moment, but finds the North decidedly to his admittedly unconventional liking. A budding filmmaker, Takai's future plans include studying cinema production, as well as directing and writing; creating a computer animated, anime-inspired video set in the world of kick boxing; and one day producing a television programme devoted exclusively to Asian cinema past, present, and future.
Tori Ullman-Wessex
PANTOMIMES LUMINEUSES
The art of French dance and music hall presentations has always fascinated Tori. In this chronicle of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century entertainments, she draws historical references to political events that affected this art-form. In her last book, The Elton Chronicles, Tori started with the idea that the fact that Elton John and partner David Furnish regularly hobnob with Royals and other various Hello stalwarts in the New Millennium shouldn't obscure the fact that Sir Elton's achievements are unique in the history of British pop. Born in 1975 as the youngest of seven in Christchurch, New Zealand, she moved to the States as a teenager and studied music theory and history at Columbia in New York, earning an MFA while gathering notes and doing research for her publishing debut.