The Monti -- Durham Chapel Hill storytelling

Inaugural Event: April 22nd, 7:30pm, Spice Street Chapel Hill

Shana Scudder is a writer and musician currently residing in Durham; however she will be relocating back to Raleigh at the end of the summer to begin the MA program in English at NC State. A graduate of Guilford College, Shana has seen her work published in various regional and national magazines such as Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness Hers, Sly, Feminist Review, Bad Subjects, Clamor, Altar Magazine, Spectator, Independent Weekly, and Urban Hiker. She has also toured the East Coast both solo and with former band Girls Make Messes, also releasing an EP, full-length album, and a live radio recording under her own Little Scudder Records. She has many other performing credentials to her name, ranging from queer performance art to New York theatre. She can be reached at sscudder@hotmail.com or www.myspace.com/shanascudder.

Melissa Delbridge is the author of Family Bible (University of Iowa Press, 2008), a memoir about coming of age in the Deep South (Tuscaloosa, Alabama) in the Sixties and Seventies. She has published essays and short stories in Antioch Review, Southern Humanities Review, Third Coast, and other journals. She is a graduate of the University of Alabama and North Carolina State University. She works as an archivist at Duke University and lives with her family in Orange County, North Carolina where she spends her leisure time letting the dogs in and out, making pickles, plotting vengeance, substantiating rumors, and working on a novel.

Bill Friedman is a member of the NC Storytelling Guild and National Storytelling Network’s “Healing Story Alliance.” He has performed at the “Five Faith’s Storytelling Concerts” (UNC-CH); “Sons & Daughters of Abraham: Sacred Stories” (Elon University); and as one of the featured regional tellers at the NC Storytelling Festival (Brevard). In addition to his collection of traditional stories (Hasidic, Sufi, African,), Bill often tells personal stories about growing up as a Jewish kid in Mobile, Alabama. His stories are a warmhearted mixture of humor, wisdom and soul. Bill works as a Family Physician with Duke Primary Care. He and his wife Jill live in Durham with their wonder-dog, Crispy.

Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi is professor of English and Comparative Literature at North Carolina State University where she teaches World Literature. She was born and raised in Cameroon; educated at the University of Yaounde, Cameroon, and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She writes fiction under the pen name, Makuchi. She is author of The Sacred Door and Other Stories: Cameroon Folktales of the Beba and Your Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon. Her fiction has also appeared in Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters, The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, Crab Orchard Review, Thamyris, Worldview, Asian Women and Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought. Her scholarly publications include Gender in African Women’s Writing: Identity, Sexuality, and Difference, many book chapters, articles, and essays in journals. Her work has been reprinted in such anthologies as The Anchor Book of Modern African Stories, Canadian Woman Studies: An Introductory Reader, African Gender Studies: A Reader, The Rienner Anthology of African Literature and African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory.

Sean Rowe has been a reporter for the Miami Herald and senior writer for the Miami New Times. He is the author of “Fever,” (2005, Little, Brown & Co.), a maritime suspense novel, and the forthcoming “Pretty Polly,” a Southern whodunit based on old Appalachian murder ballads. Rowe lives near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with his research assistant Deadline the Cat. In his spare time he is renovating a turn-of-the-century farmhouse he plans to offer as a quiet retreat for burned-out reporters and aspiring novelists. In addition to his career in journalism, Rowe has been employed as a registered nurse on a cancer ward and as a copywriter for North Carolina-based Adam & Eve, "America's Most Trusted Vendor of Adult Products." He is a member of the Authors Guild, the Academy of American Poets, and the North Carolina Writers Network, and serves as a freelance editor for Village Voice Media, LLC. Visit him online at www.sean-rowe.com.

Joe Miller has primarily been the outdoor adventure writer for The News & Observer for 16 years. But he's also spent a good deal of that time telling short stories on the trials and tribulations of daily life in two daily columns, FYI in the mid-1990s and Check It Out for about the past 10 years. Joe is married to The Monti alum Marcy Smith ("Peyton's Place"), Literary Editor and crafts columnist at the N&O.