“Publication” Class Notes

Jeannine Johnson Maia (Col ’86) published Rossio Square N.°59, a novel that takes place in a turbulent Lisbon during World War II. In a city filled with intrigue and betrayal, it’s the story of lost dreams, infinite hope, and two young people caught up in change they never sought or wanted. The novel was first published in Portugal, where she lives and writes, as Praça do Rossio, N°59.

April Pride (Arch ’98) is the host of How to Do the Pot, a new seasonal narrative podcast that answers some of the most common questions women secretly Google about cannabis. How to Do the Pot’s first season will focus on topics relevant to the health and happiness of women such as CBD, endometriosis, migraines, and sleep. 

April is an original innovator in the cannabis industry having founded one of North America’s most recognized cannabis lifestyle companies, Van der Pop, acquired by Canopy Growth in 2018. How to Do the Pot is the first product from Of Like Minds, which April co-founded with Ellen Scanlon (Col ’99, Darden ’07) in 2019. 

Deborah E. Hammond (Arch ’82 L/M) has published her 21st novel, The Rogue’s Son. Second in the Smuggled Heart series, the novel follows the McEwan family, 20 years on. Alexander McEwan II travels with his family to his mother’s home in England. It is the Regency period, and the family has come to the deathbed of Amelia McEwan’s father, The Earl of Havenstock. If he dies, Alexander will become his sole heir. As a young Scot in Regency England, the prejudice of neighbors and associates is a very real thing. To compound that problem, his father, The Duke of Arleigh, has his own secrets. If they were to become known, they would ruin his son’s fortunes in the socially concious world of the ton of Regency England. Alexander’s life is about to change forever. The Rogue’s Son is available in kindle and paperback versions on Amazon.

Mercy Hansen Mize (Educ ’10) published her first children’s picture book, Samson’s Tail, a book about her dog’s experience in the DAWGS Prison Program. The non-profit organization rescues dogs from shelters and places them with prison inmates who train them for adoption. She enjoys sharing Samson’s story and bringing awareness to the DAWGS Prison Program at book signings and readings at Barnes & Noble and independent book stores.

Rick Hodges (Col ’87) published his first novel, To Follow Elephants, in 2019. He will appear at the Virginia Festival of the Book on March 20, 2020, at New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville. To Follow Elephants tells the story of an African woman and elephant researcher who helps a young American learn why his father is imprisoned in a dusty cell in Kenya. The book, praised as “a stunning debut novel that weaves the lives of wild elephants and people in a truly breathtaking journey,” brings readers into the elephants’ world—their thoughts, beliefs and religion. Equal parts thriller, adventure and moving portrayal of elephant civilization from the creatures’ point of view, To Follow Elephants occupies the intersection between the worlds of people and animals, enriching our understanding of what it means to be human.

Christina Villafaña Dalcher (Col ’89) will publish her second novel, Master Class, in April 2020. The dystopian thriller resurrects the American eugenics movement of the early 20th century, asking how far a mother will go to save her child. Her first novel, VOX, has been translated into more than 25 languages and was a Sunday Times bestseller in the United Kingdom.

Vicki Lemp Weavil (Col ’78) has published the Blue Ridge Library Mystery series under the pen name Victoria Gilbert. Titles include A Murder for the Books, Shelved Under Murder, Past Due for Murder, and Bound for Murder. A fifth book in the series, A Deadly Edition, will be published in December 2020. Vicki is also writing another series, the Booklover’s B&B series, with the first book, Booked for Death, coming out in June 2020. 

Corinne Adams Heyning Laverty (Com ’80) published North America’s Galapagos: The Historic Channel Islands Biological Survey. The narrative nonfiction book recounts the story of a group of researchers, naturalists, adventurers, cooks, immigrants, and scientifically curious teenagers who came together in the late 1930s to embark upon a series of ambitious expeditions never before, or since, attempted. Their mission: to piece together the broken shards of the Channel Islands’ history and evolution.

Sometimes called “North America’s Galapagos,” each island supports unique ecosystems with varied flora and fauna and differing human histories. Readers follow the scientists behind closed museum doors and to all eight islands, spending time in the hot and dusty, or wet and foggy, field with them, rejoicing in their successes, cringing at their failures and shortcomings.

A lack of funds and dearth of qualified personnel dogged the pre-WWII expeditions, but only after America enters the war and the researchers are stranded on one of the islands is the survey aborted, their work left for future scientists to complete. This saga of ambition, adventure and discovery is juxtaposed against the fresh successes of a new generation of Channel Island scholars, thereby illuminating the scientific process and revealing remarkable modern discoveries that are changing our ideas of how the Americas were populated. Upon completing this book, the lasting impression the reader may have might not be the raw beauty and uniqueness of these islands, though they will certainly gain that, nor even a greater appreciation for the grandiose and challenging undertaking the scientists attempted, rather, the reader may come to recognize that the larger story of the scientific process continues long after individual efforts cease.

Laverty’s lecture schedule can be found under the “Events” tab of my website: https://www.channelislandscalifornia.com/

Thomas L. Rouse (Engr ’75 L/M) was awarded the Community Service Awards by the Northern Kentucky Bar Association and the University of Kentucky Law Alumni Association. He is a past president of the Kentucky Bar Association and has been a practicing attorney since 1978. He is an adjunct professor of Law at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University. He recently wrote Applied Ethics: Because Your Law License is Too Valuable to Lose and loves gathering with the Virginia Football Alumni Club before games at Scott Stadium. His daughter and son-in-law are Hillary Rouse Billingsley (Col ’05) and Jamie Billingsley (Com ’05).

Karen Roarty-Dansfield (Engr ’79 L/M), who retired after 33 years in materials development for the U.S. Navy, published The God of Choice under the pen name Kaye Byrd. The story centers around two families, the descendants of poor Irish immigrants and the descendants of privileged English ones whose sons cross paths during World War II. This is the first of three planned volumes that will follow the characters through the 1950’s and 1960’s.

D. Darell Dones (Educ ’04) is retired supervisory special agent and FBI Academy instructor with the FBI Behavioral Science Unit and current owner and senior consultant for Dones Global Solutions. Dones recently published Terrorist Recruitment of U.S. Gangs: Global Alliances and Biological Weapons.

Katherine Gekker (Col ’72, Grad ’73 L/M) published a poetry collection, In Search of Warm Breathing Things. Her poems have appeared in Little Patuxent Review, Delmarva Review, Broadkill Review, Apple Valley Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. Gekker’s poems, collectively called “…to Cast a Shadow Again,” have been set to music by composer Eric Ewazen. Composer Carson Cooman has set a seasonal cycle of her poems, “Chasing the Moon Down,” to music.