Speaker and Host Bios
Fourth Annual National Book Awards at Concordia College
Annette Gordon-Reed
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
2008 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction
and 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner in History
Annette Gordon-Reed is a professor of law at New York Law School and a professor of history at Rutgers University. Along with numerous articles and essays, she is the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, editor of Race On Trial: Law and Justice in American History, and coauthor with Vernon Jordan of Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir. She is the author of the forthcoming book Andrew Johnson and editor of the forthcoming Jefferson Reader on Race. Gordon-Reed is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. She lives with her husband Robert Reed and their children, Susan and Gordon. Gordon-Reed's book The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton & Company) was named the 2008 National Book Award winner for Nonfiction and was recently awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History.
Maxine Hong Kingston
2008 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
Maxine Hong Kingston was born to Chinese immigrant parents in Stockton, California in 1940 and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. A long-time member of the Berkeley faculty, she is currently Senior Lecturer for Creative Writing. Her nonfiction books include The Woman Warrior, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, China Men, which was awarded the National Book Award in 1981, Hawaii One Summer, Through the Black Curtain, To Be the Poet, and The Fifth Book of Peace. She has written one novel, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book. Kingston is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and a National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the title of “Living Treasure of Hawaii.” Hong Kingston is the 2008 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters recipient.
Kerri Miller, host
Minnesota Public Radio's "Midmorning" and "Talking Volumes" host
Kerri Miller joined Minnesota Public Radio in June 2004 as host of Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning and Talking Volumes, the joint book club of MPR, the Star Tribune and the Loft Literary Center. She has been a radio and television news reporter since 1981. Before joining KARE-11 in 1996 and serving as its long-time political reporter, Miller was a reporter at KSTP-TV in Minneapolis and KTUL-TV in Tulsa. She has won numerous awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists National Achievement Award, Minnesota Broadcasters Award, the Associated Press Award and a Gracie award from the Association of Women in Radio and Television.
National Book Awards at Concordia College
