2005 Conference: Meet the Authors and Book Signing

Saturday, July 2, 12:30PM - 1:45PM

• Medea Benjamin
• Martha Burk
• Andrea Moore Emmett
• Sara Paretsky
• Loretta Ross

Benjamin will sign copies of Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism, a collection of essays she co-edited with Jodie Evans. Offering a poignant examination of the global threat of war and violence, more than 70 of the world's most visionary experts and activists contribute to this new collection of essays about how the global peace movement can successfully stop the next war. The book provides tools that range from changes we can make in our daily lives to ways we can rally the millions of people who support nonviolence to take action.

A co-founder of the international human rights organization Global Exchange and the women's peace group Code Pink, Medea Benjamin has been a tireless advocate for social justice for more than 20 years. Described as "one of America's most committed-and most effective-fighters for human rights" by New York Newsday, and called "one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement" by the Los Angeles Times, Benjamin has distinguished herself as an eloquent and energetic figure in the progressive movement.

In Cult of Power, Burke describes her involvement in the controversy over the male-only Augusta National Golf Club and the powerful members who fought a publicity battle against her. Expanding her experience into a broader discussion of gender discrimination, Burk lays bare the reasons the closed gates of Augusta National symbolize all the ways women are still barred from the highest echelons of power—in government, social and religious organizations, and most important, in corporate America—and why we must change the system.

Burk is a psychologist, women's equity expert, and co-founder and president of the Center for Advancement of Public Policy in Washington, D.C. Currently serving as chair of the National Council of Women's Organizations, she is also a syndicated columnist and appears frequently on television and radio. She and her husband live in Washington, D.C.

A chilling indictment of contemporary fundamentalist polygamy, Andrea Moore Emmett's God's Brothel is the product of a decade of research and interviews. Revealing gruesome facts about bible-based polygamy through the voices of 18 women who escaped from 10 of the main religious groups and independent polygamous families, God's Brothel includes stories of rape, incest, and violence—making this form of polygamy more akin to sexual slavery than to any quaint religious or lifestyle choice.

A prize-winning journalist and researcher for the two-hour documentary "Inside Polygamy," which aired on A&E and the BBC, Moore-Emmett is the recipient of five Utah Excellence in Journalism awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, including a 1st place Don Baker Investigative Reporting Award and a Leading Changes Award from the Utah Professional Chapter of Women in Communications. Moore Emmett also serves as President of the Utah Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

The creator of the successful V.I. Warshawski mystery novels, Sara Paretsky will be speaking at the conference and signing her just-released book, Fire Sale, at Saturday afternoon's reception. V.I. Warshawski may have left her old South Chicago neighborhood, but she learns that she cannot escape it. When V.I. takes over coaching duties of the girls' basketball team at her former high school, she faces an ill-equipped, ragtag group of gangbangers, fundamentalists, and teenage moms who inevitably draw the detective into their family woes.

Paretsky graduated with a political science degree from the University of Kansas, a Ph.D in History from the University of Chicago, and an MBA from the University of Chicago. A longtime feminist, Paretsky advocates for women in the arts, letters and sciences.

Vibrant and fierce, Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice presents a fresh understanding of the reproductive rights movement by placing the experiences, priorities, and activism of women of color in the foreground. This rare book captures the evolving and largely unreported history of women of color organizing themselves in their struggle for reproductive justice. Projected against the backdrop of the mainstream pro-choice movement and less-known radical mobilization, these dynamic case studies explore how Latina, African American, Native American and Asian American women have spearheaded the fight for jurisdiction over their own bodies and reproductive destinies.

Ross is a founder and the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective; the Co-Director of the April 25, 2004, National March for Women's Lives in Washington D.C.; and the founder and former Executive Director of the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE), a training and resource center for grassroots activists on using human rights education to address social injustices in the United States.