CONFERENCE SPEAKERS

Molly Raphael, ALA President-Elect
Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes, co-creators of Unshelved
Joyce Ogburn, ACRL President-Elect
David Clewell, Poet Laureate of Missouri
Deborah Diesen, 2010 Missouri Building Block Picture Book Award Winner
2011 Newbery Author Clare Vanderpool

Keynote Speaker: Molly Raphael
ALA President-Elect 2010-2011
ALA President 2011-2012

Molly Raphael served as director of two major urban public library systems in Washington, DC and Portland, OR. She has devoted much time serving ALA, including Executive Board, three terms on Council, and leadership positions on numerous ALA-wide committees and committees in four divisions.

Raphael’s career-long commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and service to underserved communities is quite extensive. In Washington, she created the first deaf services program in any public library in the nation, and championed adult literacy programs and outreach to children at risk. In Portland, she initiated and then expanded ethnic and cultural diversity in staffing, collections, and programming. For this effort, Raphael received the Arthur Flemming Civil Rights Award.

As ALA president, Raphael is the chief elected officer for the oldest and largest library organization in the world. The ALA has a membership of more than 62,000 librarians, library trustees and library supporters. Its mission is to promote the highest quality library and information services and public access to information During her term, Raphael’s priorities as ALA president are: 1. advocacy; 2. diversity and inclusiveness; and 3. defending our core values.

Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes, co-creators of Unshelved

Librarian Gene Ambaum and cartoonist Bill Barnes are the creators of the library comic Unshelved. In this daily strip, Ambaum and Barnes provide an insightful and humorous look into the happenings around the Mallville Public Library, poking fun at library administrators, staff, and patrons alike.

Gene Ambaum bio by Bill Barnes:Gene Ambaum uses a pen name because he’s scared of his own shadow. He is so good at making fun of strange, difficult customers in Unshelved because he is the strangest, most difficult customer of all. He taught English overseas because no one there was in a position to criticize his spelling. If he ever starts another comic strip it will be about poop, because that’s what he spends most of his time thinking about. Follow @ambaum.

Bill Barnes bio by Gene Ambaum:Bill Barnes loves librarians, show tunes, and meat. He can count his toes without taking off his shoes. Over the past eight years, he has tried to convince Gene that the meaning of “partnership” is doing what he says 99% of the time. He can often be seen wandering the floor at trade shows playing “The Final Countdown” on his ukulele Death Adder. In his spare time he draws Unshelved and writes a comic about the software industry, Not Invented Here. Follow @billba.

Joyce Ogburn
ACRL President-Elect 2010-2011
ACRL President 2011-2012

ACRL President-Elect Joyce Ogburn will be speaking at a MACRL-sponsored session on October 6, 2011. Joyce is dean and university librarian of the University of Utah Marriott Library, and will assume the ACRL presidency in July 2011 for a one-year term.

Learn more about Joyce Ogburn.

The MACRL Luncheon with Joyce Ogburn will take place on Thursday, October 6, 2011, 11:45am-1:00pm. Tickets are $25.00 per person and may be purchased during conference registration.

David Clewell
Poet Laureate of Missouri

Mr. David Clewell will be our featured speaker at the Awards Banquet.  Mr. Clewell, a professor of English at Webster University, is currently serving as the Poet Laureate of Missouri.  He has published seven collections of poems--most recently, Taken somehow by surprise--and two booklength poems (The Conspiracy Quartet and Jack Ruby's America). His work has appeared regularly in a wide variety of magazines, including Harper's, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, Ontario Review, New Letters, and Yankee. His poetry is represented in five-dozen anthologies. He's been the recipient of the Pollak Poetry Prize (for Now We're Getting Somewhere) and the Lavan Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His Blessings in Disguise was a winner in the National Poetry Series.

"You don't have to spend very long with David Clewell, or his poetry, to know that he has a unique perspective on contemporary American life and the characters and ideas that loom large in our recent history," Gov. Jay Nixon said.  "David's wry humor, tart social commentary and accessible style give his poetry a broad appeal.”

Clewell teaches poetry workshops, 19th and 20th Century literature and topics-in-poetry seminars at Webster University. He directs the Creative Writing program and coordinates the attendant Visiting Writer Series, which he started in 1986. He received his B.A. in English at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and his M.F.A. in writing at Washington University in St. Louis.

The MLA Awards Banquet will take place on Thursday, October 6, 2011, 7:00pm-9:00pm. Tickets are $30.00 per person and may be purchased during conference registration.

Deborah Diesen, Children’s Author
Winner of the 2010 Missouri Building Block Award

Deborah Diesen is the winner of the 2010 Missouri Building Block Award for her book “The Pout Pout Fish”.  She will be speaking at the Thusnelda Schmidt Luncheon on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011. 

She grew up in Midland, Michigan, and developed an interest in writing early on.  Her parents encouraged her interest; in fact, her mom called the first poem she ever wrote “Wonderful!” and also told her to put a date on it, because “real writers always date their work.”  That bit of encouragement helped her develop a good writing habit and also provided her with a lifelong belief in herself as a Real Writer.

During college, Deborah explored a number of potential career paths and interests, taking courses in telecommunications, psychology, political science, acting, philosophy, anthropology, and more, but she never found a field of study that fit quite right.  After she graduated, with a multidisciplinary social science degree, she worked for many years at an independent bookstore.  Finally, she decided on librarianship, and returned to school to earn an MILS.

She and her husband started a family, and their children were enthusiastic about books from a very early age.  She found herself immersed in children’s literature on a day-to-day basis, and the experience reawakened her interest in writing.  She began to write stories for her boys and discovered she enjoyed it more than any other genre of writing.  Writing in rhyme is especially appealing to her, as it combines her love of words with her more analytical love of form and rhythm.  Writing for children has allowed Deborah to combine all the various paths she’s traveled and explored into one pursuit that -- at last -- fits just right.

2011 Newbery Author Clare Vanderpool

Clare Vanderpool is the author of the 2011 Newbery Medal winner, “Moon over Manifest.” Clare will be speaking at the Young Adult Services Interest Group Breakfast on Friday, Oct. 7, 2011. 

CLARE grew up reading books in unusual places—in dressing rooms, in the bathroom, while walking down the sidewalk (sometimes into telephone poles), in church, in math class. She suspects that some of her teachers knew she had a library book hidden behind her textbook, but the good ones didn’t let on.
Historical fiction is a favorite of Clare’s, to read and to write. Moon Over Manifest, her first novel, is set in the fictional small town of Manifest, Kansas, which is based on the real southeastern Kansas town of Frontenac, home of both of her maternal grandparents. Drawing on stories she heard as a child, along with research in town newspapers, yearbooks, and graveyards, Clare found a rich and colorful history for her story. Clare lives in Wichita, Kansas, with her husband and their four children.