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At our latest meeting, the BookFest planning committee finalized the authors for our annual luncheon. The luncheon is slated to be held at the Glen Ellyn Public Library in their meeting room, and boxed lunches will be served. The final food selection and pricing for the luncheon is yet to be determined.

BookFest is excited to host a panel of all female authors at our luncheon this year, our inspiration being a sort of “ladies who lunch[eon]” theme. Our list of authors includes Libby Fischer Hellman, Hannah Pittard, Sarah McCoy, and Charlene Baumbich. Read on to learn a little more about each of these interesting women (listed in no particular order).

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Hannah Pittard’s fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Oxford American, The Mississippi Review, BOMB, Nimrod, and StoryQuarterly, and was included in 2008 Best American Short Stories’ 100 Distinguished Stories. She is the recipient of the 2006 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, a graduate of the University of Virginia’s MFA program, and the author of the novel The Fates Will Find Their Way. She divides her time between Charlottesville and Chicago, where she currently teaches fiction at DePaul University.

Learn more about Hannah.

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Libby Fischer Hellmann is a transplant from Washington, D.C., where, she says, “When you’re sitting around the dinner table gossiping about the neighbors, you’re talking politics.” Armed with a Masters Degree in Film Production from New York University, and a BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania, she started her career in broadcast news. She began as an assistant film editor at NBC News in New York, but moved back to DC where she worked with Robin McNeil and Jim Lehrer at N-PACT, the public affairs production arm of PBS. When Watergate broke, she was re-trained as an assistant director and helped produce PBS’s night-time broadcasts of the hearings.

In 1978, Hellmann moved to Chicago (which would later be the backdrop of her novels) in order to work at Burson-Marsteller, the large public relations firm, staying until 1985 when she founded Fischer Hellmann Communications. Currently, when not writing, she conducts speaker training programs in platform speaking, presentation skills, media training, and crisis communications. Additionally, Libby also writes and produces videos.

Learn more about Libby.

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Finding Our Way Home is the latest book from popular speaker, award-winning journalist and Glen Ellyn resident Charlene Ann Baumbich. She is the author of the Dearest Dorothy (a.k.a. Partonville) series, Stray Affections, and Divine Appointments, as well as several nonfiction books of humor and inspiration.

Learn more about Charlene.

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Sarah McCoy is the author of the novel, The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. The daughter of an Army officer, her family was stationed in Germany during her childhood. She calls Virginia home but presently lives with her husband and dog, Gilbert, in El Paso, Texas. The Baker’s Daughter is her second novel. She is currently working on her next.

Learn more about Sarah.