Authors’ Chats, 3:30-5:00 pm
Meet the Authors, Browse their Books
Renowned Authors Living Locally
Susan Allport, science, travel & food
Page Dickey, garden writer
Katherine Potter, children’s books & illustrator
Esmeralda Santiago, memoir writer & novelist, new children’s book
Jude Watson, mystery and science fiction for young adults
Summary Biographies of Participating Authors
Susan Allport
Is an award-winning writer specializing in science, travel, and food. Her books include “The Primal Feast”; “A Natural History of Parenting”; “Sermons in Stone”; and “Explorers of the Black Box”. Allport also contributes essays, travel articles, and book reviews to The New York Times, Gastronomica, Audubon, The Hartford Courant, The Providence Journal-Bulletin, The American Scholar and the Missouri Review and lectures at the American Museum of Natural History and numerous other locations. In 2004, she was the McGee Professor of writing at Davidson College in North Carolina. Ms. Allport was a graduate student in the Department of Human Genetics at Yale University. She obtained her M.S. from Tulane University in 1976 and her B.A. in English from the Claremont Colleges in 1973. A member of the Author’s Guild, the National Association of Science Writers, the North American Mycological Association, and the Morgenthau Preserve, she lives with her family in Katonah.
Page Dickey
A long time resident of North Salem, is an award winning garden writer, a garden designer and a conservationist. Her first book, “Duck Hill Journal”, published in 1991, documents the creation of her large garden in North Salem. Her many subsequent books include the latest, “Gardens in the Spirit of Place”, “Inside and Out: Relating Garden to House”, “Dogs in Their Garden” and “Cats in Their Garden”. She is a contributing editor to House and Garden and House Beautiful and lectures widely on garden design. She designed and oversaw the planting of the Herb Garden at Katonah’s John Jay Homestead.
Katherine Potter
Was born in New York City and raised in Westchester County. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Art in Manhattan, where she majored in illustration. After two years of working as a graphic designer and illustrator in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she moved to Los Angeles where she illustrated her first two children’s books. Back in New York, Simon & Schuster published Katherine’s first author/illustrator books, “My Mother the Cat” and “Spike”. In addition to two more books for children, she has illustrated magazines, newspapers and book jackets. Katherine lives in Katonah with her husband and two daughters.
Esmeralda Santiago
Was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She came to the United States at thirteen, the eldest in a family that would eventually include eleven children. Ms. Santiago attended New York City’s Performing Arts High School, where she majored in drama and dance. She graduated magna cum laude in 1976. In 1977, she and her husband, Frank Cantor, founded CANTOMEDIA, a film and media production company, which has won numerous awards for excellence in documentary filmmaking. Ms. Santiago, is the author of three memoirs, “When I was Puerto Rican”, “Almost a Woman”, and “The Turkish Lover”, the novel “America’s Dream” and the illustrated children’s book “A Doll for Navidades”. The mother of two adult children, she lives in Bedford, with her husband, filmmaker Frank Cantor. She is currently at work on a novel.
Jude Watson
Is the New York Times bestselling author of the Star War series “Jedi Apprentice”, “Jedi Quest”, and “Last of the Jedi”. Her mystery for young adults, “Premonition”, was chosen as one of the 2005 Books for the Teen Age by the New York Public Library. Her latest novel is “Disappearance”. She grew up in New York and has lived in Florida, San Francisco, Manhattan, San Francisco (again), Manhattan (again), Florida (again), Washington State, and Delaware. After crisscrossing the country way too many times, she now lives happily ever after in Katonah, with her husband and daughter.