Authors
Fred Venturini, Author of The Samaritan
Fred was our debut author and we couldn’t have been more excited about getting his first novel, The Samaritan, out into the world. He’s a prolific short story writer with 19 stories published including two shortlisted for inclusion in Chuck Palahniuk anthologies. He writes literary fiction as well as noir, horror, speculative and paranormal fiction. Basically, if it requires words, Fred can write it. He’s currently hard at work on his second novel.
UPDATE: CONGRATULATIONS TO FRED! Fred Venturini recently signed with the William Morris Endeavor agency and he now has talented literary and film agents working on his behalf. Although his books–THE SAMARITAN and his next one DARK REVELATIONS–will not be available from Blank Slate Press, we are delighted for him and will always be among his biggest fans. So, if you didn’t pick up a copy of THE SAMARITAN while it was available from BSP, you may have to wait awhile…in the meantime, click below to see what you missed.
Find out more about Fred here.
Anene Tressler, Author of Dancing with Gravity
Anene is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in numerous literary journals. She has attended the Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers, the University of Iowa’s summer program, Wellspring House, Sewanee, Breadloaf, and others and has studied with literary luminaries like Richard Bausch, Nicholas Delbanco, Claire Messud, and Lorrie Moore. Her first novel, Dancing with Gravity, won the Literary Fiction category – 2011 International Book Awards.
Find out more about Anene here.
Steve Wiegenstein, Author of Slant of Light
Steve has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Missouri, Columbia and is currently the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at Columbia College in Columbia, MO. Since learning about an 1840s-era commune situated among the Comanches in north Texas, he has been fascinated by Utopian societies. In Slant of Light, he has combined his academic interest with his passion for history, fiction writing, and his long family heritage deep in the Missouri Ozarks. Slant of Light is his first novel.
Find out more about Steve here:
Kevin Killeen, Author of Never Hug a Nun
Okay, yes, we know this is a picture of the Artist as a Young Man, but we couldn’t resist ’cause it’s just so darn cute. A reporter with KMOX radio since 1995, Kevin Killeen has confused listeners for the past ten years with his regular morning feature, A Whole ‘nother Story. Killeen has also authored the KMOX Holiday Radio Show, an original comic play with a holiday theme, for the past 15 years or so. In Never Hug a Nun, Killeen attempts to escape his declining faculties, by casting his mind back to the days of his youth when he spent long summer days on the train tracks or hanging out at the Velvet Freeze and wishing he were a teenager.
Find out more about Kevin here.
Kevin Lynn Helmick, Author of Driving Alone
Kevin Lynn Helmick’s novella, Driving Alone, is due out in November. His previous works include The Lost Creek Journal, Clovis Point, Sebastian Cross, and Heartland Gothic, was born in December, 1963, in Fort Madison IA, a few months after Kennedy was assassinated and a few months before the Beatles landed in America. Kevin’s work is gritty and uncompromising.
Scott L. Miller, Author of Bread & Circuses
Long fascinated by the wonder called the human brain and an avid reader of psychological suspense novels, he quit writing exceptionally bad poetry, studied fiction writing under the late John Gardner and more recently at Washington University, and began writing twenty-odd versions of the first novel in his series in lieu of sleeping at night. He currently is working on his third Mitchell Adams novel from his home in Chesterfield where he lives with his wife Beta and their barn of beagles and cats. He finds time for sleep now, unless the animals hog the bed.
Find out more about Scott here.
Jean Ellen Whatley, Author of Off the Leash
Jean Ellen Whatley is an Emmy Award-winning journalist cum author who’s been published on Salon.com, More.com, SheWrites.com and, at the low ebb of her writing career, as the Bedding Columnist for Furniture Retailer Magazine.
Jean has been a guest columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Winston-Salem Journal and the Albuquerque Tribune and has been featured as guest host on “The Evening Special” on KMOX (CBS) radio in St. Louis. Her broadcast career spans nearly twenty years and several diverse regions of the country. She has been a news reporter and anchor in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Winston-Salem/Greensboro, North Carolina; and St. Louis, MO. Her reporting has been featured on CNN and ABC. Bridging the gap between reporting news and wrangling reporters, Jean has also served as Press Secretary to a New Mexico Attorney General, a Governor of Missouri and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
