2012 Moderators

Listed in alphabetical order

Denise DeRenzo Lacey

Get Onboard the Online Book Scene:
How Social Media Connects Readers, Authors, and Reviewers – Saturday 9:00 AM

Denise DeRenzo Lacey is a Newburyport resident who is a long-time fan of the Literary Festival. She is a clinical development consultant in the pharmaceutical industry, which has started using social media to connect clinical trial sites and sponsors. She is a returned Peace Corps volunteer from Tunisia, which recently orchestrated a revolution using Facebook and Twitter, and she is fascinated by the power of social media to effect political change.

Lucia Greene

Weird is the New Cool: How Quirky Characters Make Us Care – Saturday 2:00 PM

Lucia Greene, a former assistant editor of children's books, was an editor and reporter for People Magazine and currently writes for several Washington DC-based non profits. She and her husband have three grown children and live in Newburyport, MA.

Dyke Hendrickson

Technology and Terror: Mystery Writers on the Cutting Edge – Saturday 9:00 AM

Journalist Dyke Hendrickson is currently city hall reporter and feature writer for the Newburyport Daily News. He has been a writer and/or editor with the Portland Press Herald, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Boston Herald. On several occasions his award-winning feature stories have led to books. He has written two texts about the French Canadian migration to New England in the 19th and 20th centuries: Franco-Americans of Maine (Arcadia, Charleston, SC, 2010) and Quiet Presence: Stories of Franco-Americans in New England (Gannett Press, Portland, 1980). His work in historical writing is excerpted at the Museum of National Heritage at Ellis Island, NY. He has also written a novel, Last Night in Hollywood (New Sharon Press, Portland, 2005) and is working on a fourth text, Faulkner in Love, which will be published as an ebook.

Leslie Hendrickson

Food Glorious Food – Saturday 1:00 PM

Leslie Hendrickson works at The Wall Street Journal, where she edits a daily food column and covers events in New York City. She recently dined on duck tongues, scorpion, and goat eyeballs at the Waldorf-Astoria, and is an expert on food, having been eating for more than 35 years.

David Kruh

Fenway Park’s 100th Anniversary – Saturday 11:00 AM

David Kruh is a former New Yorker who has written two books on Scollay Square:  Always Something Doing, Boston's Infamous Scollay Square (Northeastern University Press,1999) and Scollay Square (Arcadia Publishing, 2004). He has co-authored books with his father, Louis (Presidential Landmarks, Hippocrene Press, 1992), and with Yanni Tsipis (Building Route 128, Arcadia Publishing). He is also a contributor to Final Fenway Fiction (Cornerstone Book Publishers, 2012),  an anthology of 18 short stories chronicling the Boston Red Sox. David's columns have appeared in a number of publications, including The Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston Magazine, and Yankee Magazine. Mr. Kruh is also a producer and published playwright. His musical, The Curse of the Bambino, premiered at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston in 2001. Though David has dabbled in acting and stand-up comedy he prefers to eat, so is currently working full time as a Marketing Communications Manager for Analog Devices, a semiconductor manufacturer.

Peter Jason Riley

Tim Riley’s Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music – Saturday 11:00 AM

Peter Jason Riley is the president of the CPA firm Riley & Associates PC in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He is the author of the book The New Tax Guide for Writers, Artists, Performers & Other Creative People. Peter specializes in taxation for individuals in creative pursuits, the website is www.artstaxinfo.com. You can read more about him by visiting a firm’s general website www.cpa-services.com.

Mary Schaefer

Truth in Fiction: Telling Her Story in History. – Saturday 1:00 PM

Mary Schaefer is a strategist, writer and speaker who has served in multiple leadership roles in academia, business, non-profit and community organizations. She guides nonprofits, schools and churches to make sense of a dramatically changing world and to experiment with new ways of working together to raise money, build visibility and mobilize stakeholders. She spent 12 years at MIT, serving as executive director of the MIT Leadership Center and director of communications for the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her previous lives include serving as an award-winning corporate communicator and journalist, speechwriter, fund-raiser, community organizer and entrepreneur.

Sandi Smith

On the Edge of Our Seats: Why Kids Love Suspense – Saturday 10:30 AM

Sandi Smith is an accomplished New York City actor/singer who recently relocated to Newburyport. Sandi has a multitude of theatre credits which include many Off-Broadway productions of children's shows, musicals, dramas, comedies and cabaret. One of her crowning moments in children's theatre was originating the role of Georgia O'Keefe in the premier Off-Broadway cast of the award winning, Noonie's Masterpiece in Purple.

A nearly 40-year veteran of the stage, Sandi has a BA in English Literature from City College of New York and an AA in Music/Theatre from Mercer County Community College.

Caroline Zimmerman

Boston’s Literary Magazine Scene – Saturday 2:30 PM

Caroline Zimmerman joined Kneerim & Williams in 2009. Previously, she held positions at Frontline, PBS's flagship investigative journalism series, at Vanity Fair media columnist Michael Wolff's Newser.com, at CBS, and at Harvard University's Transition Magazine. She graduated summa cum laude with a BA in English Literature from McGill University in Montreal, where she was culture editor of The McGill Daily. She grew up in Paris and speaks native English, French and Spanish. This year, Caroline co-founded a popular literary series showcasing New England's most established voices and its rising stars, selected among the region's top creative writing graduate programs. She is interested in literary fiction that engages with ideas but remains character-driven, literature in translation, pop culture, popular economics, social psychology, sociology, smart how-to, religion, travel, visual books, and women's issues.