“Publication” Class Notes

Esther Yin-ling Spodek (Col ’84) published We Have Everything Before Us in April. It is a darkly comic novel of everyday suburban American life, an internet romance and the families of the couple involved, love and loneliness.

Matthew J. Jones (Grad ’14) will publish his first book, Love Don’t Need a Reason: the Life and Music of Michael Callen, in the fall of 2020. The book chronicles the life and music of singer, songwriter, and AIDS activist Michael Callen (1955-1993). Callen was instrumental in the fight against AIDS in the first years of the US epidemic. He coauthored “How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach,” a publication widely regarded as one of the first safe-sex guides, and he recorded two solo albums and two albums with queer acappella group The Flirtations. This book is based on research that began as Jones’ doctoral dissertation in the McIntire Dept. of Music at UVA and includes extensive archival research as well as oral history interviews with Callen’s friends, family, and fellow musicians. Jones says Callen is a forgotten hero of the AIDS activist movement, and Jones is thrilled to have an opportunity to share his story with readers around the country and around the world.

Jennifer Krause (Educ ’10) coauthored Technology for Physical Educators, Health Educators, and Coaches, a book aimed at helping professionals enhance instruction, assessment, management, communication, professional development, and advocacy by leveraging modern technology. It has been praised as “the book to empower all teachers” and “a text that embraces current professional expectations within a twenty-first-century classroom.”

Krause is an associate professor of physical education and physical activity leadership, program coordinator of the Physical Education K-12 Teaching Program, and research faculty in the Active Schools Institute within the School of Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Northern Colorado. 

Robin Ward (Educ ’97) published Count on Texas: Fun Facts from 1 to 12, a book that entices young readers to enjoy the beauty and history of University of Texas-Austin’s campus, while counting from 1 to 12. The rhyming narrative and colorful illustrations capture the 12 months and four seasons, and help the reader learn even and odd numbers. Two coloring pages included. Available at Amazon and at MascotBooks.com

Kaethe Walther (Col ’18) will publish her debut novel, If We Were Us, in June. The book is a young adult story of friendship, love and identity set at a fictional east coast boarding school. She says she is indebted to Elizabeth Denton and the late Sydney Blair for their thoughtful comments and wise advice. 

If We Were Us: 

Everyone at the prestigious Bexley School believes that Sage Morgan and Charlie Carmichael are meant to be….that it’s just a matter of time until they realize that they are actually in love.

When Luke Morrissey shows up on the Bexley campus his presence immediately shakes things up. Charlie and Luke are drawn to each other the moment they meet, giving Sage the opportunity to steal away to spend time with Charlie’s twin brother, Nick.

But Charlie is afraid of what others will think if he accepts that he has much more than a friendship with Luke. And Sage fears that things with Nick are getting too serious too quickly. The duo will need to rely on each other and their lifelong friendship to figure things out with the boys they love.

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.

J. William Lewis (Law ’68) has published a genealogy of the Lewis family, Anthony Lewis of Isle of Wight County, Virginia. If others in the UVA family are descendants of Anthony Lewis (b. 1664), William would like to hear from you at jwl@seamancapital.com. Among the other Wahoos in Anthony Lewis’ line of descent are Deirdre Lewis Mason (Col ’98), M. Scott Lewis (Col ’98 L/M) and Logan Wilson Mercer (Col ’23).

Christopher Wigren (Col ’79, Arch ’89 L/M) published Connecticut Architecture: Stories of 100 Places, which recently received a Connecticut Book Award from the Connecticut Center for the Book. Wigren is deputy director of the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation.

Harrison A. Tisdale (Col ’16 L/M) published The Geode King in July 2019. The book can be found on Amazon.

Trent S. Dickey (Col ’77 L/M) published two articles in the PR Daily in China, United States Patent Disputes and The Asian LED Industry and Chinese Companies Asserting Patents in the United States. He practices commercial and IP litigation nationally with Sills Cummis & Gross and lives in New Jersey with his wife of 38 years, N. Janine Plauka Dickey (Col ’79 L/M). She is an attorney/business mediator. Owing to his IP legal work for both U.S. companies working with Chinese companies and directly with large Chinese entities, Mr. Dickey will speak at the World Lawyers Conference hosted by the All China Lawyer’s Association in Guangzhou on Dec. 10, 2019.

Jack Sutor Jr. (Col ’69) published The Ice Meadows, a novel set in and around Virginia, under the pen name Edmund Burwell. 

Patrick McCreesh (Col ’02 L/M) is a lecturer at the George Mason University School of Business. He recently coauthored a book, Workplace Attachments: Managing Beneath the Surface, which was published by Routledge as part of its series on employment relations.  McCreesh is the cofounder of Simatree, a data analytics and strategy consultancy. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife, Courtney Lodge McCreesh (Col ’03 L/M) and their four daughters.  

David T. Beers (Col ’75 L/M) and his coauthor, Patrisha de Leon-Manlagnit, published their latest joint staff working paper on the BoC-BoE sovereign default database. Covering the period 1960-2018, it’s the only data set that quantifies and tracks all types of defaulted debt owed to official and private creditors. The paper is available for download and the 2019 version of the database is available here. 

Chad Cole (Engr ’06) published his first book on Amazon, My 93 Year Old Roommate, which documents the two years he spent living with his grandfather.

Elizabeth “Liz” Martinez Cornetta (Educ ’02 L/M) published The Argyle Crocodile Learns About Being Different, a children’s book that will make you feel good about yourself and inspire you to help others feel good about themselves. Available for purchase at MascotBooks.com

Deborah E. Sheetenhelm Hammond (Arch ’82 L/M) has published her 20th novel, Both Sides Now. Set in 2019 and 1861, the novel explores the first summer of the Civil War in the town of Martinsburg, West Virginia, then Martinsburg, Virginia. Focusing on the historical facts of that summer, the novel explores the experience from the eyes of a 21st century woman who has time traveled to her own hometown during the first perilous weeks of the war. She knows what is coming, but can do nothing to change it. This and all novels are available on Amazon.com and at local book signing events.

Betty Phipps Roberts’ (Nurs ’53) book about Alzheimer’s, Midnight Chronicles, will be entered in the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, the largest and oldest book fair in the world, founded in 500, after the invention of the printing press. Roberts says, “My ‘advanced age’ never bothers me until I pick up the Virginia Magazine, turn to Class Notes and find the first listing as the ’60s. Where are the ’50s folks? Surely I’m not the only one still doing ‘stuff.’” 

Ken Manson (Com ’68) published Bring Me Back Alive: A Memoir of Adventure, Luck, and Terror in the Air. Manson’s first book covers his harrowing flying experiences as a U.S. Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War years. The book starts in 1967 with his initial training at he the UVA Airport (Milton Field) and concludes with his experiences as a Jolly Green Giant rescue pilot in 1973. Among the many unforgettable characters in the book is CMSGT Duane Hackney (the most decorated airman in the history of the Air Force) who flew with then-Capt. Manson during his time in the Air Rescue & Recovery Service. Flip Viles (Col ’68) served as an editor to make the book a reality. Mr. Manson is the father of Ashley Manson Marratt (Col 94) and William Manson (Col ’99), who is a doctor at the UVA Hospital.

Charles W. Snyder (Grad ’73, ’79) published an article, “The Economics of Plenty: Glenn Frank and the Great Depression,” in Summer 2018 issue of The Historian.

Maya Lazarevic Rodriguez (Col ’03) published her first book, Grenades as Lullabies, which tells the inspirational true story of a thrilling escape from a harrowing civil war in Bosnia. 

Catherine Keller Brown (Col ’97) co-edited Hope for Recovery: Stories of Healing from Eating Disorders with Christina Tinke. The book’s diverse essays emphasize each writer’s journey to recovery, providing hope for individuals suffering from an eating disorder and their loved ones. In addition to these highly personal, vulnerable essays, the book includes informative sections with insights from mental health professionals on topics such as how families can help loved ones affected by eating disorders. A portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated to local and national eating disorder organizations. 

Pamela Harris Lawton (Col ’81), associate professor in art education at Virginia Commonwealth University, just completed a distinguished chair Fulbright at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and a Tate Modern Exchange Artist Associateship in London. She published Community-based Art Education Across the Lifespan: Finding Common Ground based on 18 years of research in community-based art.

Khalilah L. Brown-Dean (Col ’98) published Identity Politics in the United States, a book that moves beyond the headlines to show how conflicts over group identity are an inescapable feature of American political development. From battles over voting rights and immigration to the 2017 rally on Grounds, there’s no question that the United States is incredibly divided. Brown-Dean shows us how we got here, and more importantly, how we move forward. She is a tenured associate professor of political science at Quinnipac University and a frequent political contributor to numerous media outlets. 

Thomas B. Gore (Res ’83), a cardiologist in LaGrange, Georgia, published his first book, a tribute to the life of David Carr Glover of Portsmouth, Virginia. Glover composed many teaching pieces for students learning piano and, having worked for Disney for many years, was associated with the Mickey Mouse theme song. Glover wrote a “method book” for learning piano and it sold a million copies worldwide. Photographs and memories from his many friends are included.

Johnny “Jon” Hunt (Col ’75 L/M) self-published a book, Asking the Moon to Leave, which is available at Outskirts Press and on Amazon. 

Christina Hendrick Melton (Col ’93) coauthored Preserving Our Roots: My Journey to Save Seeds and Stories with Blackberry Farm master gardener, John Coykendall. With an upcoming book launch and presentation at Monticello’s Heritage Harvest Festival in September, the book was listed as Amazon’s #1 New Release in South Region Gardening in advance of its November publication. Melton was also executive producer and director of the documentary, Seize & Secure: The Battle for La Fière, which broadcast on PBS on the 75th anniversary of D-Day, is currently being distributed by PBS Plus, and is available on demand on iTunes and Amazon Video. The film chronicles a relatively unknown but pivotal battle fought over a small stone bridge along a critical inland route for American forces during the allied invasion.  

Melton was nominated for a 2019 Webby Award nomination from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, as writer and producer of the Louisiana Public Broadcasting/PBS Digital Studios series, Nourish. The series featured NASA rocket engineer and South Carolina whole hog BBQ pitmaster, Dr. Howard Conyers, as host in his exploration of Southern food culture and traditions.

Melton was also recently appointed deputy director of Louisiana Public Broadcasting, with management and oversight of strategic planning for Louisiana’s statewide media network. She lives in Louisiana with her husband, Dr. Jamar Melton (Col ’92), and their three teenage sons.

John Stith (Col ’06) published his first children’s book, The Climbing Tree, about two brothers exploring the contours of their relationship through the power of imagination. The book, described as “an eloquent, poetic fable with a timeless message,” was an immediate No. 1 New Release on Amazon.