Oz Conference ~ Confirmed Speakers

Gail Bouslough

Gail Bouslough teaches Children’s Literature for Azusa Pacific University. Her doctoral dissertation, "Appropriating Wonderland: Nostalgia and Modernity in Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books and L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", was considered notable by the Children’s Literature Association. Her research interests include visual literacy and the art of the picture book, a literary format that W. W. Denslow markedly influenced.

Michael Cart

Michael Cart, a is the author or editor of 19 books, including What's So Funny? Wit and Humor in American Children's Literature, and Talking Animals and Others: The Life and Work of Walter R. Brooks. His newest edited book is an anthology, How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity, featuring a novella by Gregory Maguire and a short graphic story by Eric Shanower. This book features short stories about lesbian, gay, and transgender teens, making their experiences accessible to readers who are both like and unlike them. Michael Cart is a Booklist magazine columnist, a well known book reviewer, and the former director of the Beverly Hills Public Library. In 2000 the American Library Association presented him with the Grolier Award, a lifetime achievement award given for an “unusual contribution to the stimulation and guidance of reading by children and young people.” As President of the Young Adult Library Services Association, he led the effort to create the Michael L. Printz Award, the American Library Association’s prize for literary excellence in young adult literature. Mr. Cart, the president of the Friends of Freddy (the Pig) and a member of the Arne Nixon Center’s Governing Committee, currently lives in Columbus, Indiana.

John Fricke

John Fricke is the Emmy Award-winning coproducer/cowriter of the television programs, Judy Garland: By Myself (PBS American Masters series, 2004) and Judy: Beyond the Rainbow (A&E Biography series, 1997). He was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Album Notes for the 1996 Capitol compact disc, Judy Garland: 25th Anniversary Retrospective. Mr. Fricke is widely respected as the preeminent Garland and Oz movie historian. His newest book (co-authored with Jonathan Shirshekan) is The Wizard of Oz: An Illustrated Companion to the Timeless Movie Classic, published in 2009 in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of the MGM film. Mr. Fricke has also contributed a 42-page booklet and documentary production to the 70th anniversary Oz film DVD. He is the author of four prior books about Oz and Garland and he is a past president of The International Wizard of Oz Club. He lives in New York.

Carey Graeber

Carey Graeber is an entrepreneurial filmmaker who has created broadcast documentaries and corporate communications vehicles for major corporations, government entities and non-profits. In 2001 she founded Great Plains Productions. She is producing a documentary about the back story behind The Wizard of Oz, called Rediscovering Dorothy. The film seeks to reveal the rich history of "the women behind the curtain" including Matilda Joslyn Gage, the radical suffragist of the late 19th century who was the mother-in-law of L. Frank Baum. Her broadcast credits include, Heartbeat to Heartbeat: Women and Heart Disease (PBS), The Making of the Death Pilots--the back story behind the terrorists who commandeered the planes on 9/11 (MSNBC), Along Comes the Horse--the resurgence of heroin in middle class kids (MSNBC), The Freedom Train--a history of the National Negro Labor Council, Rosa Parks: The Path to Freedom, and The Rouge--a history of the Ford auto plant and the workers who emigrated to work in the car industry (the last three aired on WDIV, Detroit). Former President of New York Women in Film and Television, Graeber is on the faculty of the Northwestern University School of Communication in New York City.

Michael Patrick Hearn

Michael Patrick Hearn is the world's leading authority on L. Frank Baum and The Wizard of Oz and an internationally influential children's literature scholar and critic. A student of the late Alex Haley, he was only 20 when he signed his first book contract for the now classic study The Annotated Wizard of Oz. His other books include The Annotated Christmas Carol; The Annotated Huckleberry Finn; W.W. Denslow; The Victorian Fairy Tale Book; Myth, Magic and Mystery; and the soon to be published The Annotated Edgar Allan Poe. His fairy tale The Porcelain Cat was illustrated by two-time Caldecott Medal winners Leo and Diane Dillon. He has lectured all over the world and has appeared in numerous documentaries both at home and abroad. He has also written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Nation and for many other newspapers and periodicals. His study of Russian children's book illustration, From Silver to Steel, will soon appear in Moscow. He currently teaches The Picture Book Course in the graduate program in children's literature at Simmons College and his on-going project is the only authorized full-length critical biography of L. Frank Baum. He lives in New York.

Kathleen Krull

Kathleen Krull is well known for her innovative approach to biographies for young readers. Her books include The Road to Oz: Twists, Turns, Bumps, and Triumphs in the Life of L. Frank Baum (Knopf); The Boy on Fairfield Street: How Ted Geisel Grew Up to Become Dr. Seuss (Knopf); Lives of the Writers (Comedies, Tragedies, and What the Neighbors Thought) (Harcourt), and more as featured at www.kathleenkrull.com. Kathleen lives in San Diego, with her husband, children's book illustrator Paul Brewer.

Donald Larson

Donald Larson is well known to the thousands of students he taught over 40 years as a history instructor at Fresno City College but he is also widely recognized as a political commentator on the local news. He also serves on the Board of the State Center for Community College District Foundation and is the co-chair of the Old Administration Building Renovation Committee. Mr. Larson is a man of many talents, roles and interests but his one lifelong passion is world’s fairs. Ever since Don attended the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1940 as a young boy, he has been fascinated by world’s fairs in all its permutations. While in college at UC Berkeley, Mr. Larson started collecting world’s fair materials and so began his collection, which kept growing by leaps and bounds until one day he realized he could no longer store and care for all of his beloved materials. In 1971, Don looked to the Special Collections Research Center at California State University, Fresno to take on the challenge of housing, protecting, expanding and publicizing his collection. Considered one of the biggest and best world's fair collections in the world, the Donald G. Larson on International Expositions and Fairs shines as one of the treasures of the Henry Madden Library. Expert in all things related to world’s fairs from the beginning to the present, Mr. Larson remains a major benefactor and advocate for the collection and plays a vital and active role in ensuring that it continues as a vibrantly valuable resource to researchers from all over the world.

Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire has published novels, short stories, picture books, essays, and reviews. His adult novels include Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Son of a Witch, and A Lion Among Men (all New York Times bestsellers), as well as Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, and Mirror. Wicked inspired a musical currently playing in numerous American venues, and in London, Tokyo, and Stuttgart. Mr. Maguire’s novel Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister aired as an ABC television movie in 2002. His latest book is Making Mischief: A Maurice Sendak Appreciation. Future projects include The Next Queen of Heaven, and Matchless: A Christmas Story, which began life as an original story written for National Public Radio’s "All Things Considered." Mr. Maguire received his Ph.D. in English and American Literature at Tufts University (1990). He is a national figure in children’s literature education. He was a professor and associate director of the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College, 1979 through 1986. Since 1986 he has been co-director and founding board member of Children’s Literature New England, Incorporated, a non-profit organization that focuses attention on the significance of literature in the lives of children. He writes occasionally for the Sunday New York Times Book Review, the Horn Book Magazine, and other journals. He makes his home with his family in Concord, Massachusetts, in Vermont, and in France.

David Maxine

David Maxine grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he was introduced to the Land of Oz by his second grade teacher, Mrs. Lena Strong. He received his BFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts in 1990, and his MFA from the Yale School of Drama in 1993. He is the owner of Hungry Tiger Press, a publishing company that specializes in Oz and L. Frank Baum. He is also a Scenic Designer working in stage, screen, and television. His design work includes Sweeney Todd for Skylight Opera and the feature film Ready? Ok! He received a Grammy Award nomination for "Best Historical Album" as Producer of the 2 CD set Vintage Recordings from the 1903 Broadway Musical The Wizard of Oz, which was also nominated for "Best Research in Recorded Popular Music" in the Awards for Excellence sponsored by the Association of Recorded Sound Collections. In 2005 David Maxine was presented with the L. Frank Baum Memorial Award by the International Wizard of Oz Club. David Maxine lives in San Diego, California, with his partner Eric Shanower.

Dee Michel

Dee Michel is writing a book about the appeal of The Wizard of Oz for gay men and boys, tentatively titled Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Men and Boys Love Oz. Michael Cart, Eric Shanower, and Gregory Maguire are among the gay Oz fans he has interviewed. His article on gay men and Oz appeared in the Baum Bugle in 2002. He has talked about the topic at the Library of Congress, academic conferences, gay studies classes, Oz conventions and at Boston’s GLBT Youth Pride rally. Exhibits of Dee’s Oz collection, highlighting the gay connection, have been seen in academic and public libraries, and as part of a fine art show. His work has been discussed in the Village Voice, the New York Review of Books, and other print, online and radio sources and in academic works. Dee has been a contributing editor for The Baum Bugle and the editor of the International Wizard of Oz Club’s web site. He has been collecting Oz books and related materials since he was young. Dee’s father, Martin Michel, was gay himself, and read the Oz books as bedtime stories to Dee and his brother, and passed along to Dee the books he had as a child. Dee has Master’s and PhD degrees in library and information science. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Jim O’Connor

The Oz Collectible Card Game is the brainchild of artist and designer James C. O’Connor. Jim was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. At U.C. Berkeley he double-majored in Physiology and Dramatic Arts. Jim has worked in multimedia and new media development for Apple, The Walt Disney Studios, Symantec, and Pacific Bell. Clients have included Disneyland, Warner Bros., FileMaker, Minolta U.S.A., and the late Majel Roddenberry, wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Jim currently resides in Carson City, Nevada with his professional cat Dresden (named for his favorite character, Chicago wizard Harry Dresden). He engages in a variety of creative endeavors, including sculpting and crafting scale miniatures. His 1/12 scale model of the Carson City Virginia & Truckee Railroad Depot, circa 1873, is in the permanent collection of the Nevada State Museum. Additionally, Jim runs the successful website HiddenDVDEasterEggs.com, which has been featured in Sound and Vision magazine. In his free time, he enjoys playing Magic: The Gathering with friends and reading. In 2003, disenchanted with creating websites and databases that offered little in lasting satisfaction, Jim began developing the Oz Collectible Card Game with his best friend Marc Jacobs. He was inspired by the happy memories of reading the Oz books in his youth. Development accelerated last year with the completion of artwork for the game and he is excited to present the game publicly for the first time at this convention.

Graham Rawle

Graham Rawle is a British writer and collage artist whose visual work incorporates illustration, design, photography, and installation. His weekly Lost Consonants first appeared in The Guardian in 1990 and ran for 15 years. He has produced other regular series for The Observer and the Sunday Telegraph Magazine. His new series, Bright Ideas, appears weekly in The Times. His books include the Wonder Book of Fun, Lying Doggo, and Diary of an Amateur Photographer. His critically acclaimed Woman’s World, a novel created entirely from fragments of found text, is being made into a feature film. His most recent book, an illustrated reinterpretation of The Wizard of Oz, recently won Best Illustrated Book as well as 2009 Book of the Year at the British Book Design Awards. Graham Rawle has lectured and exhibited internationally and teaches for the MA Sequential Design and Illustration course at the University of Brighton. He lives in London.

Richard Rutter

Richard Rutter, shown here as the Wizard of Oz, is a long-time member of the International Wizard of Oz Club, best known for his 25 appearances in the annual Winkie Convention Costume Contests. In 2002 he published an Index to The Baum Bugle (Volumes 1-45, 9957-2001), continuing the original index by the late Fred Otto. For the last 18 years he has published an annual Annotated Oz Cartoon Book, in which over 700 individual cartoons have appeared. His extensive Oz library includes Oz books in 50 languages. Dr. Rutter recently retired after 51 years as Professor of Orthodontics at the University of the Pacific in San Francisco..

Eric Shanower

Eric Shanower discovered the Oz books when he was six years old and decided then that he would continue it. He attended the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey. In 1986 his graphic novel The Enchanted Apples of Oz was published by First Comics, followed by four more volumes. A collection of all five Oz graphic novels, Adventures in Oz, was issued by IDW Publishing in 2006. He wrote and illustrated a children’s novel, The Giant Garden of Oz, a collection of short stories, The Salt Sorcerer of Oz and Other Stories, and he is writing the scripts for Marvel Comics's new best-selling adaptations of L. Frank Baum's Oz books, with art by Skottie Young. Mr. Shanower is best known for his Age of Bronze series of graphic novels, retelling the Trojan War legend. Age of Bronze won the Will Eisner Comics Industry Award for Best Writer/Artist in both 2001 and 2003. The second collected volume, Age of Bronze: Sacrifice, was selected as one of the Best Books of the Year (2004) by Publishers Weekly. In 1994 Mr. Shanower co-founded Hungry Tiger Press with his partner David Maxine. Mr. Shanower's work has also been published by DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Archie Comics, Random House, IDW, Nickelodeon Magazine, Slave Labor Graphics, Books of Wonder, Star Wars Insider, and others. He lives in San Diego.

Sally Roesch Wagner

Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner, executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, New York, is a nationally recognized lecturer, author and performance interpreter of woman’s rights history. One of the first women to receive a doctorate in the United States for work in women’s studies (UC Santa Cruz), and a founder of one of the country’s first college women’s studies programs (CSU Sacramento), she has taught in women’s studies for 39 years and currently serves as adjunct faculty in the Honors Program at Syracuse University. Dr. Wagner appeared as a "talking head" in the Ken Burns PBS documentary, Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, for which she wrote the accompanying PBS faculty guide. She appeared also on the PBS special, One Woman, One Vote, and has been interviewed numerous times on National Public Radio. Her recent books include She Who Holds the Sky: Matilda Joslyn Gage (Sky Carrier Press, 2003), the Introduction for the reprint of Matilda Joslyn Gage’s 1893 classic Woman, Church and State (Humanity Books, 2002), and Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists (Native Voices, 2001). She lives in Syracuse, New York.

Suzan L. Zeder

Suzan L. Zeder, the author of Time Again in Oz, has been recognized nationally and internationally as one of the nation's leading playwrights for family audiences. Her plays have been performed in all fifty states, Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Australia, Germany, Israel, and New Zealand, and have been published in Great Britain, Germany and Japan. Step On A Crack, Wiley And The Hairy Man, In A Room Somewhere, and The Death And Life Of Sherlock Holmes are regularly performed by professional and university theatres throughout the country. Doors and Mother Hicks were produced at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., which also co-commissioned Do Not Go Gentle. In 1990 Anchorage Press published Wish in One Hand and Spit in the Other, an anthology of her nine published plays. Time Again in Oz premiered at Seattle Children's Theatre and has since been produced at The University of Texas at Austin, Childsplay in Tempe, Arizona and South Coast Repertory Theatre in California. Professor Zeder is the three-time winner of the Distinguished Play Award given by the American Alliance of Theatre and Education. In the spring of 1996, Ms. Zeder was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre in Washington, D.C. Professor Zeder is the first holder of an endowed chair in Theatre For Youth/Playwriting at the University of Texas.