Inside Scoop Live!

Fidelis O. Mkparu was born in Onitsha Nigeria. He is a Harvard-trained cardiologist who has written medical articles for both scientific and lay audiences. His previous novel, Love’s Affliction, was a 2016 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner for Fiction, a Reader Views Literary Award Winner for 2015/2016, and a finalist for the 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award for Multicultural Fiction. He lives in Canton, Ohio USA.

For more information about Fidelis Mkparu and his books visit his website at www.fidelismkparu.com.

Topics of conversation:

• Passion for Writing

Melissa Muldoon is an artist, graphic designer, and award-winning author of the Studentessa Matta Website, a dual language blog, where she promotes the Italian language and culture. Through the Matta Website, she organizes small group language immersion programs in Italy twice a year, in collaboration with Italian schools as well as private Italian language homestay vacations, with teachers all over Italy.

Waking Isabella follows Melissa’s debut novel Dreaming Sophia, published in 2016. In this new book set in Arezzo, Italy, readers are taken on another art history adventure. Waking Isabella weaves together several loves stories as well as a few mysteries, as Nora, the protagonist begins to resolve the puzzle of a painting, which has been missing for decades of Isabella de’ Medici — the Renaissance princess who was murdered by her husband.

For more information on Melissa Muldoon and her books, visit her website at www.melissamuldoon.com.

Topics of conversation:

• Isabella de Medici

Dr. Iyabo Ojikutu is a board-certified pediatrician and fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She received her medical degree at the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Nigeria. She has been practicing medicine since she was 22 years old, and currently owns, and runs her practice in Atlanta, Georgia, where she lives with her two daughters. Permanent Happiness is her first book. Her writing began in December 2015, after her dear father passed.

For more information on Dr. Iyabo and her book visit her website at www.driyabo.com.

Topics of conversation:

• Her inspiration to start writing

Adeed Dawisha was born and raised in Iraq and educated in England, where he received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics in 1974. Until September 2016, he was University Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Miami University, Ohio, and is the recipient of many prestigious fellowships and awards.

In addition to over 80 academic and public policy articles and book chapters, Dr Dawisha has 12 scholarly books, the most recent of which are the new and expanded editions of Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (2016), and Iraq: A Political History (2013), both published by Princeton University Press, and The Second Arab Awakening (2013), published by W.W. Norton.

Since retirement, he has turned to fiction with the publication of his first novel, The Paymaster (Outskirts Press, 2017). A fast-paced thriller, The Paymaster is a tightly written and intricately plotted novel, with many unanticipated twists and revelations. The plot is complex, but not complicated, and while the narrative moves along at a tempo that makes it difficult for the reader to put the book down, there is enough space for character development, so that the reader feels intimately connected to the characters at every juncture of the novel.

Adeed Dawisha is married to Dr. Karen Dawisha, author of the best-selling book, Putin’s Kleptocracy (Simon and Schuster, 2014). He has a daughter, Nadia, a son, Emile, and a recently arrived beautiful grandson, Theodore.

Topics of conversation:

• Writing Mystery/Thrillers in Retirement

Kaylin McFarren has received more than 40 national literary awards, in addition to a prestigious Golden Heart Award nomination for Flaherty’s Crossing – a book she and her oldest daughter, Kristina McMorris, co-authored in 2008. Prior to embarking on her writing journey and developing the popular Threads action/adventure romance series, she poured her passion for creativity into her work as the director of a fine art gallery in the Pearl District in Portland, Oregon; she also served as a governor-appointed member of the Oregon Arts Commission.

When she’s not traveling or spoiling her pups and three grandsons, she enjoys giving back to her community through participation and support of various charitable and educational organizations in the Pacific Northwest, and is currently the president of the Soulful Giving Foundation – a non-profit focused on cancer research, care and treatment at hospitals throughout Oregon.

For more information about Kaylin McFarren and her work, visit her website at www.kaylinmcfarren.com.

Topics of conversation:

• Writing Across Different Genres

J. Everett Prewitt is a Vietnam veteran and a former Army officer. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and a Master of Science Degree in Urban Studies from Cleveland State University. Prewitt was awarded the title of distinguished alumni at both schools.

His debut novel Snake Walkers placed first for fiction in four different literary contests and won the Bronze Award for General Fiction in ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year contest. Snake Walkers was also honored by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

Prewitt’s second novel, A Long Way Back was awarded the Literary Classic’s Seal of Approval. It won the Independent Publishers of New England first place award, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal Award, received the Bronze Award for the INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award, the Silver Award from Literary Classics and the DNQ Award from IBPA’s Benjamin Franklin Award.

Something About Ann, and a series of short stories related to A Long Way Back including the award-winning The Last Time I Saw Willie, will be available in September 2017.

Prewitt loves tennis, billiards, backgammon, jazz, and a good red wine.

For more information about Everett Prewitt and his work, visit his website at www.eprewitt.com.

Topics of conversation:

• Writing and PTSD

Michael Pronko has lived in Tokyo for twenty years but was born in Kansas City, a very different world. After graduating from Brown University in philosophy, he hit the road, traveling around the world for two years working odd jobs. He went back to school for a Master’s in Education, and then took a teaching position in Beijing. For two years, he taught English, traveled China and wrote.

After more traveling and two more degrees, another M.A. in Comparative Literature in Madison, Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in English at the University of Kent at Canterbury, he finally settled in Tokyo as a professor of American Literature at Meiji Gakuin University. His seminars focus on contemporary novels and film adaptations, and he teaches other classes in American indie film and American music and art.

Pronko has published three award-winning collections of essays: Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo (Raked Gravel Press 2015), Tokyo’s Mystery Deepens (Raked Gravel Press 2014), and Beauty and Chaos: Essays on Tokyo (Raked Gravel Press 2014). He has published books in Japanese and two textbooks in both English and Japanese.

Over the years in Tokyo, he has written regular columns for many publications: The Japan Times, Newsweek Japan, Jazznin, ST Shukan, Jazz Colo[u]rs, and Artscape Japan. He runs his own website Jazz in Japan (www.jazzinjapan.com). He also continues to publish academic articles and helps run a conference on teaching literature.

For more information about Michael Pronko and his work, visit his website at www.michaelpronko.com.

• Writing Mystery

Diana Forbes is a 9th generation American, with ancestors on both sides of the Civil War. Diana Forbes lives and writes in Manhattan. When she is not cribbing chapters, Diana Forbes loves to explore the buildings where her 19th Century American ancestors lived, loved, survived and thrived. She is passionate about vintage clothing, antique furniture, ancestry, and vows to master the quadrille in her lifetime. Diana Forbes is the author of New York Gilded Age historical fiction.

For more information about Diana Forbes visit her website at www.DianaForbesNovels.com.

• Being a Native New Yorker and finding traces of Old New York in today’s city

Michael Kasenow is an award-winning novelist (View From The Edge; A Wicked Thing); an award-winning poet (Six Feet Down); and the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Last Paradise. He has traveled extensively, living in many places among a variety of unique personalities. His lifetime resume includes waiter, cab driver, bartender, lumberman, janitor, and ranch hand in New Mexico. These experiences add authenticity to his written work. He is currently a Geology Professor at Eastern Michigan University and lives in a Michigan harbor town, enjoying the west waves of Lake Michigan.

For more information on Michael Kasenow and his book visit his website. 

• Poetry as a writing and reading tool/exercise

Nicole Taylor is an anthropologist who explores contemporary social issues related to education and health through the analytic lens of language practices. Her research includes teasing and bullying in schools, childhood obesity, and body image concerns and social media use among youth. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English and a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Arizona.

Following graduate school, she worked in nonprofit and corporate settings conducting research in the areas of substance abuse, education and poverty, childhood obesity, and school climate. Nicole then served for five years as the Director of Scholar Programs at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico before returning to Texas State University, her undergraduate alma mater, to accept a faculty position.

For more information on Nicole Taylor and her book, visit her website.

• Conducting Ethnographic Research