Georgia Writers Association - Serving a diverse writing community

Board of Directors

Gloria Bennett, President of the Board

Gloria Bennett earned a Master of Arts in Professional Writing degree from Kennesaw State University with a concentration in creative writing and support areas of composition and rhetoric and applied writing. She writes poetry and prose and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in various literary journals and reviews. She is a tenure-track assistant professor of English at Gainesville State College, where she teaches composition and creative writing and serves as a faculty advisor for The Chestatee Review, an award-winning, student-produced journal. She is currently at work on a memoir.

Raymond Atkins

Raymond L. Atkins resides in north Georgia with his wife.  They live in a 110-year-old house that they have restored themselves and have four grown children who drop by from time to time.  Raymond has had a variety of occupations during the past 35 years, but now that the children are grown, he is pursuing his lifelong ambition of being a novelist and writer.
 
His short stories have been published in Christmas Stories from Georgia, Christmas Through a Child's Eyes, The Lavender Mountain Anthology, The Blood and Fire Review, The Old Red Kimono, Long Island Woman, The Red Clay Review, and Savannah Magazine. 
 
His humorous columns appear regularly in The Rome News-Tribune, Like the Dew, The Baby Boomer News, and Memphis Downtowner Magazine. 
 
His first novel, The Front Porch Prophet, was published by Medallion Press in June of 2008 and is available at your favorite bookseller. Raymond was awarded the Georgia Author of the Year Award for First Novel as well as the Independent Book Publishers Awards Gold Medal for Best Regional Fiction, Southeast, for this novel.   
His second novel, Sorrow Wood, was published to critical acclaim by Medallion Press in June of 2009 and is available at your favorite bookseller. His third novel, Camp Redemption, was released in  2011.

A. Louise Staman

A. Louise Staman is an award winning author for her book, Loosening Corsets: The Heroic Life of Georgia’s Feisty Mrs. Felton, First Woman Senator of the United States. Staman has also won awards for poetry and publishing. She won the Grand Prize of the Jekyll Island Millennium Time Capsule Contest for her poem, “Future, Past, and Present,” Semifinalist in the 2006 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition for the poem, “My Five Breasts,” and was the 2006 winner of a writing competition by Illuminati Press of Miami University of Middletown for the poem, “Clippings,” published in the anthology, Under Our Skin.

Mrs. Staman has an M.A. in Humanities from Old Dominion University, an M.A. in French from University of Illinois, a B.A. in French and History from Kent State University with additional French study and research in Paris, Montréal, and Neuchâtel, Switzerland. She is the owner of Tiger Iron Press in Macon, Georgia.

Chris Ward

Kennesaw State Webmaster, Christopher Ward, joined KSU in April 2002. As webmaster, he designs and maintains the top levels of Kennesaw.edu as well as multiple academic and administrative department sites. In addition to his primary Webmaster duties, he also teaches Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Web Usability courses for faculty and staff through the Center for University Learning; he has designed numerous print pieces for departments, including Intercollegiate Athletics and Academic Affairs; and he produces "OwlTalk," a weekly podcast for the university's athletic program. His achievements at the university include a 2004 CASE Award, a 2004 COSIDA Award, the Center for University Learning's Fall 2008 Facilitator of the Quarter, and recognition as the 2004 Kennesaw State Staff Employee of the Year.

Prior to working at KSU, Chris worked in the Marketing Department at Interland, an Atlanta-based Web hosting company. In his two and a half years at Interland, Chris served as the Webmaster of Interland.com. He also designed and maintained the company's support, newsletter, and intranet sites.

A Kennesaw State alum, Chris graduated in 1995 with a degree in Political Science. His work career also includes three and a half years at the Profit Recovery Group and as the marketing director for On Axis Systems, a small audio/visual company in Kennesaw.

An avid sports fan, Chris is a devout follower to "his" favorite teams - the Super Bowl XXXV Champion, Baltimore Ravens and the 3-time World Series Champion, Baltimore Orioles. Chris has been married for thirteen years to his wife, Michelle (who he met at KSU). They have two daughters, Gracie (8), and Reagan (5).

Mary Lou Odom

Mary Lou Odom is an Associate Professor of English (Rhetoric and Composition) at Kennesaw State University, where she also is Director of the KSU Writing Center, Coordinator of the MAPW Teaching Assistant Program, and Associate Director of Writing Across the Curriculum for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research interests include writing program and writing center administration with emphasis on the training of writing teachers and tensions between theory and practice. Recent publications include “Trust the Tutor; Trust Yourself” in Southern Discourse and “The Power of One:  Truth Amid Triumph in Women’s Literacy,” a review essay in College Composition and Communication.

Karen Pickell

Karen Pickell is a student in the Master of Arts in Professional Writing program at Kennesaw State University, where she is at work on a collection of poems and short stories. Her poetry has appeared in Bluestem, The Cleveland Review, and Poets on Adoption. She also contributed to the books Oil and Water . . . and Other Things That Don’t Mix and Social Media in Context: Writers Explore the Marketplace. Karen serves as an assistant editor of Flycatcher: A Journal of Native Imagination. She blogs at Lost Daughters as well as on her website, www.karenpickell.com.

Anne R. Richards 

Anne R. Richards is Associate Professor of English at Kennesaw State University, where she teaches professional communication and gender studies and is active in the university's peace studies minor. In 2008, she and co-editor Carol David published the anthology Writing the Visual: A Practical Guide for Teachers of Composition and Communication (Parlor Press). Dr. Richards has published three articles on alternative rhetorics in Technical Communication Quarterly; the most recent article concerns the rhetoric of sound in new media. With Adrienne Lamberti, she is about to publish Complex Worlds:  Digital Culture, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication, for Baywood's Technical Communication Series.  With Iraj Omidvar, she is editing Muslims in American Popular Culture, a collection forthcoming with Praeger. She and Omidvar are also completing, for Syracuse University Press, a collection of travel writing by Easterners who have visited the West. In 2006-2007, Richards and Omidvar served as Fulbright Teaching Fellows in Tunisia.

Pamela Bauer Mueller

2009, 2008, and 2006 Georgia Author of the Year, Pamela Bauer Mueller, depicts valuable messages about relationships, love, loyalty and acceptance in her five children’s books and her historical novels.  Ms. Mueller has enjoyed introducing her readers to the history of Georgia’s Golden Isles and the southeastern Low Country since becoming a Georgia resident in 2000.  She has written four historical novels featuring local characters.  Ms. Mueller was the 2009/2008/2006 Georgia Author of the Year as well as athree-time Mom’s Choice Award winner.  Her historical non-fiction novel about Jekyll Island, Splendid Isolation, has garnered five national awards.  Ms. Mueller resides on Jekyll Island, Georgia with her husband Michael and two cats.  

History

Brief History of The Georgia Writers Association(GWA)

Founded in 1994 by writers Geri Taran and Anthony Grooms, and literary agent Susan L. Graham, the association sponsors conferences, seminars, monthly writing workshops are held on the 2nd or 3rd Saturday of most months on the campus of Kennesaw State University. Taran served as executive director until 2006, when she was succeeded by Ralph T. Wilson. The Georgia Writers Association is currently housed in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, GA.

GWA sponsors the annual Georgia Author of the Year Awards (GAYA). Shortly after its founding, the Georgia Writers Association assumed responsibility for the awards, which were first given in 1964 by the Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists. Commercially and independently published authors from Georgia are eligible for nomination. Awards in a variety of categories are announced and presented in June at the GAYA ceremony.