Avideh Bashirrad is Deputy Director of Marketing at The Random House Publishing Group.

Esther Bushell, an alumna of Tufts, was a high school English teacher in the Greenwich, CT Public Schools for forty years. As she approached retirement, her former students, now adults involved in book groups, often invited her to lead their book groups. This morphed into a natural and almost spontaneous second career as a book group facilitator, particularly in Fairfield and Westchester counties. Esther now facilitates at private book groups as well as the Sunday Forum at St. Paul’s Church in Riverside, CT and the Evening Book Discussion Group at the First Presbyterian Church in Greenwich. Esther is also the coordinator for Community Reads, an annual event at the Perrot Memorial Library, sponsored jointly by the Library and Just Books, Too, an independent bookstore in Old Greenwich.

Lynne Griffin is a nationally recognized expert on family life. She is the author of Life Without Summer: A Novel (St. Martin’s Press, 2009) and Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment (Penguin 2007). As the parenting contributor for Boston’s Fox 25 Morning News, she appears regularly in the segment Family Works. Lynne teaches in the graduate program of Social Work and Family Studies at Wheelock College and at Grub Street Writers. She has written for Parenting Magazine, Scholastic Parent and Child, the popular blog, The Writer’s Group and her own website LynneGriffin.com. Lynne lives outside Boston, Massachusetts with her family.

Jennifer Hart is the VP, Associate Publisher of Harper Perennial and Harper paperbacks where she oversees the marketing and publication of more than 250 paperbacks a year. She has worked on the marketing campaigns for such reading group favorites as Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Bel Canto and Ahab’s Wife, and more recently, The Madonnas of Leningrad and The Space Between Us. Jennifer is the member of two book clubs and in April of last year she began writing the blog www.bookclubgirl.com, dedicated to sharing great books (from all publishers, not just her own), news and tips with book club girls everywhere.

Joshua Henkin is the author most recently of the novel Matrimony, which was a 2007 New York Times Notable Book, a Book Sense Highlight Pick of the Year, and a Borders Original Voices Selection. He is also the author of the novel Swimming Across the Hudson (Putnam, 1997), which was a Los Angeles Times Notable Book. His short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle. At last count, Josh has visited more than 70 book groups to discuss Matrimony, an experience he has written about as a guest blogger at Books on the Brain and ReadingGroupGuides.com, and on his own website --- www.JoshuaHenkin.com. Josh is a professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Brooklyn College, and he lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, their two young daughters, and their golden retriever. 

Heather Johnson has been a read-a-holic for as long as she can remember. In fact, the only childhood punishment that worked on her was when her mom took her books away! After graduating from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, getting married to her wonderful husband, and having a fantastic little boy, Heather realized that (gasp!) she hadn’t read a book for fun in years. This required an immediate trip to the library. Soon after, she felt the need to discuss books with other people. In 2005 she started a book club called Storie delle Sorrelle. As the “Book Club Madam” she works hard to ensure that her club members learn something from each book they read while having fun at the same time. More recently, she started a blog to chronicle all the books she reads each year. Meanwhile in the "real world," Heather is the Sales/Marketing Coordinator for an IT company.

Click here to read an interview with Heather about the Storie delle Sorelle book club.

Jamie Layton recently turned 40; co-founded the ‘Queen Beaches’ blog with Katherine Quinn; was diagnosed with fashion Obsessive-Compulsive disorder- a wonderful excuse for buying new shoes; and has taken out a second mortgage to feed her addiction to premium denim. Her goals for the next forty years include hiring a personal stylist; finishing the entire Martini Menu of her Club in one sitting; and traveling to more fabulous places she barely can afford. At last count there were over 2,000 books in her house most of which have been read, but there's always room for more! When not raising two kids or trying to give away her husband’s three dogs, she is a bookstore manager, water aerobics instructor, free lance writer and competitive dieter.

Debra Linn is the Book Club Coordinator and one of the Events & Marketing goddesses at Books & Books – an independent, locally owned bookstore with three locations in South Florida and a brand new store in Grand Cayman. Books & Books –- known for hosting 60-70 author events a month -- just celebrated the 25th anniversary of its Coral Gables location and soon will mark 20 years on Miami Beach’s famed Lincoln Road. Debra is based out of the 3-year-old store in the Bal Harbour Shops, a beautifully landscaped open-air garden that also happens to be the most lucrative shopping mall in the United States. A recovering newspaper sports editor who served most of her 13 years at the Miami Herald and Chicago Tribune, Debra now writes Books & Books’ weekly newsletter and recommendations and enjoys not worrying about which authors are using Human Growth Hormone.

A former English major at Yale, Andrew McCullough long ago stopped reading serious fiction and concentrated instead on work, family, and his golf handicap. Sensing that he was missing something, he assembled a group of friends in Marin County, California and formed the Man Book Club (www.manbookclub.com). It was an immediate success. The Man Book Club has since shared with other men and book groups around the country its formula for encouraging men to read and enjoy fiction. Andrew has agreed to post his occasional observations on men and reading.

Kathy L. Patrick is the owner of Beauty and the Book, the only Hair Salon/Bookstore in the country located in historic Jefferson, Texas. She also is founder of The Pulpwood Queens Book Club, which is the largest “meeting and discussing” book club in the world. Kathy Patrick also founded and runs three book festivals in the Arkansas/Louisiana/Texas area including Books Alive, Girlfriend Weekend, and the International Book Club Author Extravaganza. She currently writes a Pulpwood Queen Blog for The Marshall News Messenger, one of the 27 Cox Newspapers, and she writes a bimonthly column for Southern Living online, called “What the Pulpwood Queens are Reading.” Currently, she is in negotiations for her own television talk show with TSTN in Dallas, Texas.

She has appeared on "Oprah", "Good Morning America", and other national television shows, and she has appeared in national publications such as Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal.

Kathy L. Patrick lives just outside of Jefferson, Texas in the piney woods with her husband, Jay, and two teenagers, Helaina and Madeleine.

Shannon McKenna Schmidt is the co-author of Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West (www.noveldestinations.com). Her writing has appeared in National Geographic Traveler, New Jersey Monthly, Arrive, Pages, and on Bookreporter.com, and she is a regular contributor to Shelf Awareness (shelf-awareness.com) and ReadingGroupGuides.com. Shannon lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, and has been a member of a book club for 12 years.