Carmel Authors and Ideas Festival

JESSICA JACKLEY

admin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:13:03 +0000

JESSICA JACKLEY is a founder and CEO of ProFounder (www.profounder.com), a new crowdfunding platform helping small businesses in the U.S. raise investment funding through community involvement. ProFounder is currently working with a select group of alpha entrepreneurs and will be open to the public in fall 2010. Prior to this, Jessica co-founded Kiva.org, the world’s first peer-to-peer online microlending website. Kiva (www.kiva.org) lets internet users lend as little as $25 to hardworking entrepreneurs, and has been one of the fastest-growing social benefit websites in history. Since its founding in 2005, has loaned over $150M from lenders to entrepreneurs across 200 countries.
Jessica holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science from Bucknell University. She lives in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and is a trained yoga instructor, avid surfer, and poet.

MORE INFO: www.profounder.com

LIAM TIERNAN

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:35:38 +0000

LIAM TIERNAN began his music career in his native Belfast and formed the legendary group Barleycorn. Their first recording, “The Men Behind the Wire”, landed in the number one slot on the Irish music charts and remained there, staying in the top ten for eighteen months and selling in excess of 3 million copies worldwide.

Barleycorn toured Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, performing in major concert halls, clubs and theaters. In 1981 Liam embarked on a solo career, and the last three decades have found him crisscrossing the United States and Canada playing clubs and festivals. His two solo albums, “One for the Ditch” and “Liam Tiernan”, are both highly acclaimed. When not delighting audiences on the road, Liam is kept busy as a proprietor of one of Boston’s finest restaurant-pubs, Tiernan’s, where he is known to sing from time to time.

MORE INFO: www.liamtiernan.com

TAELEN THOMAS

admin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:43:19 +0000

TAELEN THOMAS, known for his resonant delivery and powerful stage presence,
portrays, in his own one-man plays, many well-known historical and literary figures, including Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Theodore Roosevelt and Jack London.

Taelen was also the featured reader at the Robinson Jeffers Big Read in 2008. He has recorded a CD of the poetry of Jeffers, and is the narrator for the Monterey Bay Symphony’s performances of music based on Jeffers’s work.

Educated at Stanford and the University of Hawaii, he has been performing his
one-man shows throughout America since 1970.

MORE INFO: www.kellypro.com

NOLAN GASSER

admin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:43:10 +0000

NOLAN GASSER is a critically acclaimed composer, pianist, and musicologist – most notably as the Chief Musicologist at Pandora Internet Radio. He received his Ph.D. in Musicology from Stanford University, where he has been an Adjunct Professor in Medieval and Renaissance Music History. His compositions have been performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Alice Tully Hall, and La Salle Pleyel in Paris; and by ensembles such as the Baltimore Symphony, the Charleston Symphony, the Memphis Symphony, the Oakland Symphony, and the American Brass Quintet, among many others.

Dr. Gasser has explored the fascinating confluence between music and science through his writings and compositions – including through two musical works written in celebration of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the latter of which, Cosmic Reflection (a narrated symphony on the full history of the Universe), will be released as DVD in early 2011. He has lectured frequently on the means by which music compliments and informs the scientific realm. In addition to his pioneering work at Pandora (as the architect of the Music Genome Project), Dr. Gasser is also the Artistic Director of Classical Archives, the largest classical music website on the Internet.

MORE INFO: www.nolangasser.com

PO BRONSON

admin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:15:51 +0000

PO BRONSON and Ashley Merryman’s New York Magazine articles on the science of parenting won the magazine journalism award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as a Clarion Award. Their articles for Time magazine have won the award for outstanding journalism from the Council on Contemporary Families.

Bronson authored five books, including Nurtureshock: New Thinking About Children, a New York Times and national bestseller, written with Ashley Merryman (published by Twelve in September 2009) and the #1 New York Times bestseller What Should I Do With My Life? Bronson lives in San Francisco, with his wife and two children.

MORE INFO: www.pobronson.com

CONDOLEEZZA RICE

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:30:21 +0000

CONDOLEEZZA RICE was the 66^th United States Secretary of State — only the second woman, and the first black woman ever, to hold the office. She was also President Bush’s National Security Advisor during his first term, distinguishing herself as the first woman ever to serve in that position.

“Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family” is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told. It is not that of an accomplished world leader, but of a little girl trying to find her place in a hostile world and of two remarkable parents, and an extended family and community, that made all the difference. Her book takes us not just through her childhood but also, her twenties and thirties as she builds a record of achievement that positions her for involvement in world-historical events.

MORE INFO: http://www.washingtonspeakers.com/speakers/speaker.cfm?SpeakerId=690

PETER ARNOTT

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:28:32 +0000

PETER ARNOTT has been a writer and director for most of his life, mostly in the corporate worlds of advertising and marketing, including helping establish a Tokyo office of an American ad agency, where he served three years as Creative Director. As a communications consultant, his client list includes big-board names like General Motors Hughes Electronics, Rockwell International, and Price Waterhouse. His executive experience includes heading a film and video company, serving corporations and institutions.

In addition to his corporate experience, Peter has been involved in the theatre since he was a child actor. And, in addition to decades of acting and directing, he has written several big-budget plays and musicals which were fully produced privately. As a singer and musician, his “hobby” trio has successfully played in Las Vegas and on national TV.

He lives in Sausalito, California, with his wife of 48 years. His son is an actor and a screen writer in Los Angeles.

CAMERON TUTTLE

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:26:41 +0000

CAMERON TUTTLE likes to make people laugh—at the moment, about high school. She is the author of “Paisley Hanover Acts Out”, the first novel in a new Young Adult series from Dial Books. The second novel, “Paisley Hanover Kisses and Tells”, will be published in July 2010.

She is also the author of the best-selling series The Bad Girl’s Guides, which ignited an underground, underwire movement, and “The Paranoid’s Pocket Guide”. Her quirky, irreverent books have been translated into fourteen languages and generated an embarrassing number of ancillary products, a Webby nominated online community, and a network TV sitcom.

She is currently writing the third novel in her YA series, “Paisley Hanover Crosses Her Heart” and the screenplay for “Paisley Hanover Acts Out”. A Bay Area native, Cameron lives beyond her means in San Francisco.

MORE INFO: www.camerontuttle.com

PATRICK FLANIGAN

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:25:43 +0000

PATRICK FLANIGAN uses the condensed language of poetry to connect the superficial and the sublime. Reviewers have commented that his “brilliant word pictures will enrich your mind, renew your spirit, and refresh your soul.” His “clear honest language … has made his insightful observations available to every reader.”

He is the author of three books of poetry Surviving the Storm, Milk and Coffee, When Sunflowers Speak and a folio of poems called Freestanding Verse. A DVD version of When Sunflowers Speak was released recently.

He can be reached at pgpublishing@redshift.com

JULIA BOLZ

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:24:28 +0000

JULIA BOLZ is a nationally-recognized social justice activist. An international lawyer by profession, she traded in a successful career to serve people in the world’s most impoverished regions. In 2002 she founded a grassroots project called “Journey with an Afghan School,” which, over the years, grew into a nongovernmental organization, called Ayni Education International. With funds raised by communities across America, Julia and her colleagues have built and repaired dozens of schools, serving some 25,000 Afghan students. In addition, they are working to strengthen the Afghan school system by equipping schools, providing teacher training, setting up libraries and computer centers, and developing parent teacher organizations. Their mission is to empower Afghans, so they can build just, sustainable and life-affirming communities.

Julia not only seeks to build schools but bridges of understanding between the United States and Afghanistan. Uniquely, 50,000 Americans are “journeying” with her and her colleagues, including students, book clubs, various religious and civic organizations, foundations, Rotary, and National Geographic. Not only have these groups participated in cultural exchanges and cross-cultural curricula, but several community members have joined her in Afghanistan. Julia’s mantra is to “engage, educate, empower and inspire.”

A powerful voice for women and children, Julia regularly speaks around the country, writes about her experiences, and meets with political decision-makers. She has received several national awards for her civic engagement, leadership, and passionate citizenship.