Robert K. Ackerman

BOOK:Wade Hampton III

PRESENTING:Saturday 12:40 p.m. Congaree Meeting Room A&B

Robert K. Ackerman, author of Wade Hampton III, is a retired professor of history who has served as dean of Erskine College and Drew University and as president of Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of South Carolina, he is the author of several works on South Carolina history, including South Carolina Colonial Land Policies. Ackerman lives in Lexington, South Carolina.

Earl Middleton

BOOK:Knowing Who I Am: A Black Entrepreneur's Struggle and Success in the American South

(1919-2007)

Earl M. Middleton was the founder and owner of Coldwell Banker Middleton and Associates, one of the largest real-estate brokerages in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and honored by numerous state and civic organizations. He and his wife, Bernice, were married for sixty years and had three children. Middleton will be represented at the 2008 SC Book Festival by his co-author, Joy W. Barnes, and his son, Ken Middleton.

Andrew Billingsley

BOOK:Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families

PRESENTING:Sunday 2:00 p.m. Richland Meeting Room A&B

The author of Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families, Andrew Billingsley is a professor of sociology and African American studies and senior scholar in residence at the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina. He served as a professor and chair of the Department of Family Studies and a professor of sociology and African American studies at the University of Maryland, as president of Morgan State University, and as provost at Howard University.

His previous books are Mighty like a River: The Black Church and Social Reform and Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: The Enduring Legacy of African-American Families. Billingsley is the recipient of the DuBois-Johnson-Frazier Award from the American Sociological Association and the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Association of Black Sociologists. He was also featured in the PBS documentary Blacks in the Civil War, narrated by Morgan Freeman.

Peter Zheutlin

BOOK:Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride

PRESENTING:Saturday 11:20 Richland Meeting Room C; Saturday 4:30 p.m. Richland Meeting Room A&B

Peter Zheutlin is a freelance journalist and author whose work appears regularly in the Boston Globe and the Christian Science Monitor. Mr. Zheutlin has also written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, AARP Magazine and numerous other publications. He is the author of Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry’s Extraordinary Ride (Citadel Press, 2007), and the co-author, with Thomas B. Graboys, M.D., of Life in the Balance: A Physician’s Memoir of Life, Love and Loss with Parkinson’s Disease and Dementia (forthcoming from Sterling Publishers, April 2008). He resides in Needham, Massachusetts, with his wife, author Judith Gelman, and his two sons.

Joy W. Barnes

BOOK:Knowing Who I Am: A Black Entrepreneur's Struggle and Success in the American South

PRESENTING:Saturday 12:40 p.m. Congaree Meeting Room A&B; Saturday 3:30 p.m. The Hilton Columbia Center

A native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Joy W. Barnes is a graduate of Clemson University. Barnes has worked at the Middleton companies of Orangeburg, South Carolina, since 1972. With the late Earl M. Middleton, she is coauthor of Middleton’s memoir, Knowing Who I Am: A Black Entrepreneur's Struggle and Success in the American South.

Matthew J. Bruccoli