Ted Balcom served as Administrator of the Villa Park (IL) Public Library for 20 years before retiring in 1999. A past winner of the Public Library Association’s Allie Beth Martin Award, he has led monthly book discussions in several public libraries since 1978 and has conducted numerous workshops on leading book discussions throughout the country since the publication of his book, Book Discussions for Adults: A Leader’s Guide (American Library Association, 1992). Presently he is the Secretary and Archivist of the Adult Reading Round Table, a readers’ advisory continuing education group he helped organize in 1987, and is a guest lecturer in the graduate school library science program at Dominican University. He lives in Arlington Heights, IL with his wife, Kathy, and their two miniature poodles, Winston and Henry.

Amanda Blau is the Children’s Services Program Coordinator for the Downers Grove Public Library in Illinois. To promote her library’s summer reading club, she has visited schools dresses as a princess, a cowgirl, a secret agent, a superhero, a pirate, and an alien. She believes the next best thing to reading books is talking about them.

Heather Booth is a a Readers’ Advisory Librarian at the Downers Grove Public (IL) Library where she specializes in teen services. When she’s not reading, talking about, or writing about books, she enjoys playing with her baby daughter, home brewing, and dabbling in various textile crafts.

 

Nick DiMartino is the author of three published novels set in Seattle, all supernatural thrillers; and has had over 20 plays in full-run productions across the U.S. He reviews new international fiction for his blog NovelWorld and for the online bookselling newsletter Shelf Awareness. Since 2001 he’s chosen the Nick’s Pick of the Month for University Book Store in Seattle, where he’s been the campus book-buyer for over 30 years.

Neil Hollands is an adult services librarian at Williamsburg Regional Library in Virginia, where he specializes in readers’ advisory and collection development. He reviews books for Booklist and Library Journal, writes articles for publications such as RUSQ, and presents at state and national library conferences. A long-time advocate of book groups, he leads a successful speculative fiction group and participates in two others each month. His first book, Read On…Fantasy Fiction, was published in 2007 by Libraries Unlimited. He is at work on a second book, due in 2009, called Fellowship in a Ring: a Handbook for Fantasy and Science Fiction Book Groups.

 Gary Warren Niebuhr is the Library Director for the Village of Greendale in Wisconsin. When not reading one of the 6,000 thousand private eye novels he has in his basement, he is writing books for Libraries Unlimited, watching NASCAR, gardening, taking photographs, making assemblage, or petting one of his two cats, Biakabutuka and Boginskaya. Occasionally he talks to his wife of 28 years, Denice.

Kaite Mediatore Stover writes Booklist’s “He Reads..She Reads…” column with David Wright and refuses to give up her day job as Head of Readers’ Services for Kansas City Public Library. When she’s not reading tarot cards, gardening, tap dancing, and despairing of ever redecorating her bathrooms, she’ a roadie and merch girl for her husband’s numerous bands.

 

Mary Ellen Quinn is editor of the Reference Books Bulletin section of Booklist, and Managing Editor, Booklist Online. Once in awhile she puts aside wonky reference resource reviewing to read a biography or a novel, and  she’s Booklist’s in-house Jane Austen maven.

 

Misha Stone is a Readers’ Advisory Librarian at The Seattle Public Library. When she is not reading, she is playing with her infant son or indulging her love of pop culture (i.e., watching lots of TV or blog-surfing).