Saturday Keynote Speaker
Melissa Fay Greene

Greene is a master at recreating events through the eyes of those who lived through them. All her books have won significant awards and two, Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple Bombing, were National Book Award finalists.

Greene has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, LIFE, Good Housekeeping, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Readers Digest, Ms., The Wilson Quarterly, and Redbook, among others. A frequent guest on CNN and NPR, her stories also have been featured on 20/20, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and Primetime.

Her nonfiction book titles include Praying for Sheetrock, The Temple Bombing, Last Man Out, and There Is No Me Without You.

Melissa is also mom to NINE children, five of whom have been adopted.  

From the publisher: Two-time National Book Award nominee Melissa Fay Greene puts a human face on the African AIDS crisis with this powerful story of one woman working to save her country’s children. After losing her husband and daughter, Haregewoin Teferra, an Ethiopian woman of modest means, opened her home to some of the thousands of children in Addis Ababa who have been left as orphans. There Is No Me Without You is the story of how Haregewoin transformed her home into an orphanage and day-care center and began facilitating adoptions to homes all over the world, written by a star of literary nonfiction who is herself an adoptive parent. At heart, it is a book about children and parents, wherever they may be, however they may find each other. Winner of Elle magazine’s 2006 readers’ award in nonfiction.