Rick Bass


Rick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1958. His father was a geologist who passed on his passion to his son.  Bass received a B.S. in petroleum geology at Utah State University in 1979, and then worked as a gas and oil geologist in Jackson, Mississippi.  He started writing short stories during his lunch breaks.



In 1987 he and his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes, moved to the Yaak Valley in the northern Rockies, near the Idaho-Montana-Canada border.  They have two daughters and a couple of hunting dogs.  Bass is active in working to protect the Yaak area from roads and logging, and serves on the board of the Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies.



He is the author of over twenty books. His first short story collection, The Watch, set in Texas, won the PEN/Nelson Algren Award, and his 2002 collection, The Hermit’s Story, was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Bass’s stories have also been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short Stories.

Jana Bommersbach


Jana Bommersbach is one of Arizona’s most acclaimed journalists. The Arizona Press Club has recognized her lifetime of achievement with its highest honor--The Distinguished Service Award. And the Society of Professional Journalists have inducted her into the Oder of the Silver Key as an "inspiration to the state's media community."

She has been Arizona Journalist of the Year and twice was recognized as the nation's top city magazine columnist. She is a communications expert who has won accolades in every phase of her career: journalist, author, broadcaster and speaker.


Her reading at the Northern Arizona Book Festival this year is generously supported by One Book Arizona who selected her book, The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd, as their 2010 winner.

Brought to Arizona in 2002, and coordinated by the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records (ASLAPR), ONEBOOKAZ is a program that brings communities together through literature. Beginning in April every year, this program encourages communities across the State of Arizona to read the same book at the same time and participate in discussions and programs centered around that book. More information is available at www.onebookaz.org.

John G. DeGraff III

John G. DeGraff III, 37, has been a resident of Flagstaff for 16 years. His favorite hobby is collecting postcards and other historical memorabilia of Flagstaff. As a former employee of the Weatherford Hotel, he enjoyed sharing his collection with the public that patronized him at this establishment. He loved giving tours to discuss the history of the hotel and Flagstaff as well.

DeGraff is a member of the Arizona Historical Society and the Holland Society. His passion for Flagstaff history stems from working at the Weatherford Hotel and interacting with the wonderful people of Flagstaff. “The people of Flagstaff are what make this town so special and unique,” he said.

Today, DeGraff enjoys being a family man. He and his wife Kelly are raising two sons, Garrett and Wesley. He can’t wait for the two to get older so he can share all that Flagstaff and Northern Arizona have to offer. He hopes this work will create excitement for all who love Flagstaff.

Margaret Erhart

Margaret Erhart is the author of five novels, most recently The Butterflies of Grand Canyon. Her fourth novel, Crossing Bully Creek, won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and in several anthologies, including The Best American Spiritual Writing 2005. Her commentaries have aired on National Public Radio. She lives in Flagstaff and teaches creative writing on Hopi and on the Navajo Nation. She is a columnist for the Arizona Daily Sun and a river guide and hiking guide in Grand Canyon.

Lisa Schnebly Heidinger

Lisa Schnebly Heidinger's love of Arizona is as deep as her roots; the town of Sedona was named for her great-grandmother, Sedona Schnebly. For 30 years, Lisa has been a journalist, finding and recording Arizona's stories, first as a newspaper and television reporter, then as a columnist and author. She has written five books about aspects of Arizona, and countless articles.

Some of the highlights of her career have been producing a half-hour documentary on the Arizona Trail, writing about three trips down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, exploring a drug tunnel on the Arizona-Mexico border, interviewing polygamist family members in Colorado City, and profiling politicians, death row inmates and pioneer Arizonans.

She lives in Phoenix with her husband Tom, son Rye Schnebly, daughter Sedona Lee, and dog Leupp.

Annette McGivney

Annette McGivney has been Southwest Editor for Backpacker magazine since 1996 and written scores of articles over the last two decades about wilderness experiences and environmental issues. In addition to Backpacker, her work has appeared in Outside magazine, The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and Runners World. McGivney is author of the book Leave No Trace: A Guide to the New Wilderness Etiquette (The Mountaineers Books) and, most recently, Resurrection: Glen Canyon and a New Vision for the American West (Braided River). She is a Lecturer in the Journalism program at Northern Arizona University where she teaches writing and environmental communication courses. Annette lives in Flagstaff, Arizona with her son Austin who did his first rim-to-river hike in the Grand Canyon at age 4.

Gene Munger

A native Missourian, Gene grew up in southeast Missouri, attended Chaffee, Sikeston, Benton and Cape Girardeau schools and graduated from Southeast Missouri State College in 1956 with a B.S. in Accounting.

After spending 35 years with Shell Oil Company, he established Munger & Associates, a public affairs consulting firm specializing in crisis communications, media relations, emergency response plans and community relations, areas in which he became nationally recognized.

Since 1997, he has lived in Flagstaff, Arizona becoming very involved in a number of non-profit agencies. In 2005, he became the Flagstaff Symphony’s Executive Director, retiring in 2007.

His book, “Momma, Don’t Ya Want Me To Learn Nothin’?” covers his growing up in southeast Missouri during the transitional 1940’s and 1950s’. Its royalties will go to his and his sister’s endowed Ruth Humphreys Munger scholarship at Southeast Missouri State University.

His wife, Molly, is the current Director of Community Relations, Northern Arizona University.

Warren Perkins

Warren Perkins worked as a teacher on the Navajo reservation in the early seventies.  He received his medical degree and did family medicine residency at the University of Arizona in Tucson and then worked at Ganado for twelve years. In 1993 he moved to Flagstaff where he worked in a private group family practice for a number of years, then in a Native American clinic in Flagstaff and is now at the Sacred Peaks clinic in east Flagstaff.  His wife of 36 years is a Navajo linguist. They have three grown children and a grandson. Their two sons who live and work in Flagstaff play in a metal band.

   Warren Perkins has been writing for several years but only began publishing in 2009 with a novel, Putrefaction Live from UNM Press and a story in Threepenny Review. He’s had the pleasure of working for the NABF in its early years and met many authors who came for these events, a great inspiration to him and the local writing community.

Nicole Walker

Nicole Walker was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. After she graduated from high school, she left to attend Reed College in Portland, Oregon and to grow green vegetables, only to return to the University of Utah for graduate school. After receiving her PhD, she took her first job as a professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. However, the lure of the four corner states once again proved too strong. In 2008, she and her husband, the filmmaker, Erik Sather, and her daughter Zoe moved to Arizona where she was fortunate to receive a position at Northern Arizona University as Assistant Professor of Creative Nonfiction and Poetry.

In 2007, she received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment from the Arts. She has published poems and essays in Ploughshares, the North American Review, Fence, Ninth Letter and other journals. In April, 2010 her book of poems, This Noisy Egg, was released from Barrow Street Press.