Friday, March 27th (600 PM)
Emmanuel Jal
Emmanuel Jal has won worldwide acclaim for his unique style of hip hop with its message of peace and reconciliation born out of his experiences as a child soldier in Sudan. His music can be heard alongside Coldplay, Gorillaz, and Radiohead on the fund raising ‘Warchild - Help a Day in the Life' album, as well as in three ER episodes, the National Geographic documentary God Grew Tired of Us, and more recently in the feature film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He also featured on John Lennon's ‘Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur' amongst the likes of U2, REM and Lenny Kravitz.
Emmanuel Jal was born in war-torn Sudan, and while he doesn't know exactly when, he believes it was in the early 1980s. He was taken from his family home in 1987 when he was six or seven years old, and sent to fight with the rebel army in Sudan's bloody civil war. For nearly five years, he was a "child warrior," put into battle carrying an AK-47 that was taller than he was.
By the time he was 13, he was a veteran of two civil wars and had seen hundreds of his fellow child soldiers reduced to taking unspeakable measures as they struggled to survive on the killing fields of Southern Sudan. After a series of harrowing events, he was rescued by a British aid worker (Emma McCune) who smuggled him into Nairobi to raise him as her own.
To help ease the pain of what he had experienced, Emmanuel started singing. In 2005, he released his first album, Gua ("peace" in his native Nuer tongue), with the title track broadcast across Africa over the BBC and becoming a number one hit in Kenya. Gua also earned him a spot on Bob Geldof's "Live 8″ concert in the UK.
Jal performed at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday celebrations in Hyde Park, London, June 08, he shared a stage with Alicia Keys, Annie Lennox, Damien Marley and Stephen Marley at the Black Ball in London in July 08 and also addressed delegates at the UN in New York in the same month. Jal has also performed with Razorlight, Supergrass, and Faithless in Europe.
Last October Emmanuel toured the United States as part of the National Geographic All Roads Film Festival, in which he performed in New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and New Orleans. Jal also performed with Moby and Five for Fighting in the 2007 live concert film, The Concert To End Slavery (www.concerttoendslavery.com/trailer).
Jal has a full-length documentary on his life and times which has been touring the film festival circuit. It premiered at the Berlinale festival this year, and won the Cadillac audience choice award at the Tribeca film festival. His autobiography has been sold to St. Martin's Press with anticipated release of spring 2009. His new album ‘Warchild' was released on 12th May 2008 on the Sonic360 label (distribution by ADA Global) with additional production and mix by Neal Pogue, (Outkast, Talib Kweli, Pharohae Monch).
www.myspace.com/emmanueljal
http://www.sonic360.com/
http://www.warchildmovie.com/
Facebook Fan Page
NY Times book review of War Child
Time Magazine Book Review
Washington Post Book Review
Rolling Stone Interview
Saturday, March 28th (400 PM)
Mystery Weekend
***
Joan Del Monte, Hannah Dennison, Melinda Wells
Joan Del Monte was a featured author at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. in September 2007. She is also a multi-faceted woman, and has owned an antique shop, a real estate agency, and art gallery in Venice. She taught courses in antiques at UCLA extension and the California State College system; lectured on antiques on radio and wrote a bibliography of small antiques for the Los Angeles Public Library.
"Mud Blood - Murder in the Sacramento Delta" was awarded Editor's Choice by iUniverse.
A criminal lawyer, FULTON YEE, disappears, and the search for him is no place for a lady, But unconventional mystery writer VERA MOONACHIE has to find him, because he is churning his files of nasty crimes for her plot and he has the solution to her current mystery.
From the moment she starts her search, Vera is confronted with a hornets nest of fragile egos, including Fulton's trio of feuding ex-lovers. We meet Nancy Branscomb, an editor Fulton met years before when he visited her family's cabin in the Sacramento Delta. We meet Florence Loring, a real estate agent with a past so colorful that she met Fulton when he was defending her in court. And we meet Emma Sawtooth, a haystack-shaped earth mother who runs a writer's group. Vera encounters an authorship dispute based on a notebook. And when Vera picks up that notebook, she picks up the deadliest kind of enemies--people with something to hide.
Hannah Dennison is the author of the Vicky Hill mystery series. Aspiring investigative journalist Vicky Hill faces two challenges. The first is to escape the stultifying boredom of funeral reporting for the Gipping Gazette by making a career-enhancing front-page splash. The second is to lose her virginity-a heavy burden for a woman of twenty-three. Vicky's chance for a scoop comes with the discovery of three grisly chicken corpses, which are bizarrely connected to the unusual death of elderly Sir Hugh, the local hedge-jumping enthusiast. As Vicky delves deeper into village affairs, she is thrilled to find the sleepy English market town harbors more than its fair share of secrets. The new installment in Vicky's adventures is entitled Scoop.
Linda Palmer is the author of 7 published novels, and a non-fiction book on screenwriting titled How To Write It, How To Sell It: Everything A Screenwriter Needs To Know About Hollywood. She is also a produced screenwriter, and was a production vice president of Tri-Star Pictures.
Beginning in 2004 her mystery novels have been coming out once a year. Love IsMurder (2004), Love Her to Death (2005), Love You Madly (2006), and Kiss of Death (2007) were written under the name Linda Palmer. In her new series of mysteries - culinary mysteries (that's murder with recipes in the back of the book) she is using the pen name Melinda Wells. The latest installment in the series is Death Takes The Cake.
Saturday, March 28th (600 PM)
The Book Club will meet after the Mystery Book event
Emmanuel Jal
Emmanuel Jal has won worldwide acclaim for his unique style of hip hop with its message of peace and reconciliation born out of his experiences as a child soldier in Sudan. His music can be heard alongside Coldplay, Gorillaz, and Radiohead on the fund raising ‘Warchild - Help a Day in the Life' album, as well as in three ER episodes, the National Geographic documentary God Grew Tired of Us, and more recently in the feature film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio. He also featured on John Lennon's ‘Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur' amongst the likes of U2, REM and Lenny Kravitz.
Emmanuel Jal was born in war-torn Sudan, and while he doesn't know exactly when, he believes it was in the early 1980s. He was taken from his family home in 1987 when he was six or seven years old, and sent to fight with the rebel army in Sudan's bloody civil war. For nearly five years, he was a "child warrior," put into battle carrying an AK-47 that was taller than he was.
By the time he was 13, he was a veteran of two civil wars and had seen hundreds of his fellow child soldiers reduced to taking unspeakable measures as they struggled to survive on the killing fields of Southern Sudan. After a series of harrowing events, he was rescued by a British aid worker (Emma McCune) who smuggled him into Nairobi to raise him as her own.
To help ease the pain of what he had experienced, Emmanuel started singing. In 2005, he released his first album, Gua ("peace" in his native Nuer tongue), with the title track broadcast across Africa over the BBC and becoming a number one hit in Kenya. Gua also earned him a spot on Bob Geldof's "Live 8″ concert in the UK.
Jal performed at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday celebrations in Hyde Park, London, June 08, he shared a stage with Alicia Keys, Annie Lennox, Damien Marley and Stephen Marley at the Black Ball in London in July 08 and also addressed delegates at the UN in New York in the same month. Jal has also performed with Razorlight, Supergrass, and Faithless in Europe.
Last October Emmanuel toured the United States as part of the National Geographic All Roads Film Festival, in which he performed in New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and New Orleans. Jal also performed with Moby and Five for Fighting in the 2007 live concert film, The Concert To End Slavery (www.concerttoendslavery.com/trailer).
Jal has a full-length documentary on his life and times which has been touring the film festival circuit. It premiered at the Berlinale festival this year, and won the Cadillac audience choice award at the Tribeca film festival. His autobiography has been sold to St. Martin's Press with anticipated release of spring 2009. His new album ‘Warchild' was released on 12th May 2008 on the Sonic360 label (distribution by ADA Global) with additional production and mix by Neal Pogue, (Outkast, Talib Kweli, Pharohae Monch).
www.myspace.com/emmanueljal
http://www.sonic360.com/
http://www.warchildmovie.com/
Facebook Fan Page
NY Times book review of War Child
Time Magazine Book Review
Washington Post Book Review
Rolling Stone Interview
Saturday, March 28th (400 PM)
Mystery Weekend
***
Joan Del Monte, Hannah Dennison, Melinda Wells
Joan Del Monte was a featured author at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. in September 2007. She is also a multi-faceted woman, and has owned an antique shop, a real estate agency, and art gallery in Venice. She taught courses in antiques at UCLA extension and the California State College system; lectured on antiques on radio and wrote a bibliography of small antiques for the Los Angeles Public Library.
"Mud Blood - Murder in the Sacramento Delta" was awarded Editor's Choice by iUniverse.
A criminal lawyer, FULTON YEE, disappears, and the search for him is no place for a lady, But unconventional mystery writer VERA MOONACHIE has to find him, because he is churning his files of nasty crimes for her plot and he has the solution to her current mystery.
From the moment she starts her search, Vera is confronted with a hornets nest of fragile egos, including Fulton's trio of feuding ex-lovers. We meet Nancy Branscomb, an editor Fulton met years before when he visited her family's cabin in the Sacramento Delta. We meet Florence Loring, a real estate agent with a past so colorful that she met Fulton when he was defending her in court. And we meet Emma Sawtooth, a haystack-shaped earth mother who runs a writer's group. Vera encounters an authorship dispute based on a notebook. And when Vera picks up that notebook, she picks up the deadliest kind of enemies--people with something to hide.
Hannah Dennison is the author of the Vicky Hill mystery series. Aspiring investigative journalist Vicky Hill faces two challenges. The first is to escape the stultifying boredom of funeral reporting for the Gipping Gazette by making a career-enhancing front-page splash. The second is to lose her virginity-a heavy burden for a woman of twenty-three. Vicky's chance for a scoop comes with the discovery of three grisly chicken corpses, which are bizarrely connected to the unusual death of elderly Sir Hugh, the local hedge-jumping enthusiast. As Vicky delves deeper into village affairs, she is thrilled to find the sleepy English market town harbors more than its fair share of secrets. The new installment in Vicky's adventures is entitled Scoop.
Linda Palmer is the author of 7 published novels, and a non-fiction book on screenwriting titled How To Write It, How To Sell It: Everything A Screenwriter Needs To Know About Hollywood. She is also a produced screenwriter, and was a production vice president of Tri-Star Pictures.
Beginning in 2004 her mystery novels have been coming out once a year. Love IsMurder (2004), Love Her to Death (2005), Love You Madly (2006), and Kiss of Death (2007) were written under the name Linda Palmer. In her new series of mysteries - culinary mysteries (that's murder with recipes in the back of the book) she is using the pen name Melinda Wells. The latest installment in the series is Death Takes The Cake.
Saturday, March 28th (600 PM)
The Book Club will meet after the Mystery Book event
Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey
