Our Authors

Barry Vacker teaches media and cultural theory at Temple University, Philadelphia. The author of many articles and book chapters, his recent publications include the forthcoming textbook anthology, Media Environments (San Diego: Cognella Publishing 2010), which will be marketed nationally as a text for “Mass Media and Society” courses. Vacker wrote the text for Peter Granser’s art photography book about postmillennial culture, Signs (Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz and The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography 2008). He authored and designed four books of critical theory, Zero Conditions (2008), Crashing Into the Vanishing Points (2009), Starry Skies Moving Away (2009), and Slugging Nothing: Fighting the Future in Fight Club (2009), all produced by Theory Vortex, an experimental media collaborative founded by Vacker. He also wrote and directed the experimental documentary, Space Times Square (2007), which has screened in festivals and galleries in Beijing, Hamburg, Paris, Dallas, New York, and Philadelphia.

Vee has been a Vampire Diaries fan since the series’ original publication, when a classmate passed her a copy of The Awakening in seventh grade homeroom. She’s a History major dropout, former military brat and preacher’s kid, and can often be found at concerts. She currently resides in Arizona with her (patient, supportive, TVD fan) musician husband and a ridiculous amount of CDs, records, books, and DVDs.

Red has been a fan of the Vampire Diaries since 1993, when he found the series in Secondary School. He studied Literature at University, and is a keen amateur photographer who dreams of one day owning a DSLR camera (preferably in a sexy, matte black). Red is British and lives somewhere along the east coast of the United Kingdom, not far from the sea. He likes cats, funky socks and English Breakfast tea.

Emma Varvaloucas is the executive director of The Progress Network, where she writes the What Could Go Right? newsletter and hosts The Progress Report podcast. Previously, she ran editorial at the largest Buddhist publication in the West, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and is the editor of two books. She is a graduate of New York University’s journalism program and is an alumnus of Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal, where she studied Tibetan Buddhism. She has a love-hate relationship with social media, and her videos for The Progress Network have been seen millions of times across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, to her delight and chagrin.

Brian Vaszily is a world-renowned expert in helping people live long and thrive. He’s a veteran researcher, author, speaker, and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience focused on healthy aging, longevity, natural health, and behavior change. He’s most known for pinpointing the simplest changes that produce the greatest results.

Brian is the founder and CEO of the 500,000-member The Art of Anti-Aging. This platform empowers those in their middle and golden years with the top evidence-based natural solutions to live long, avoid and help overcome disease, and live well. He’s the creator and host of The Art of Anti-Aging’s highly regarded healthy aging summits. These feature today’s most prominent medical doctors and researchers and have reached over 2 million listeners. Brian is also the founder and CEO of Purity Woods, a leading skincare company that provides only USDA certified organic products featuring nature’s most potent age-defying botanicals. Brian is an avid gardener, and he lives outside Chicago with his wife and youngest kids who endure his famously bad dad jokes.

RITA award-winning author Evelyn Vaughn (who writes her Western historical romances as Yvonne Jocks) has published 17 novels and a dozen fantasy short stories. She also teaches literature and creative writing for Tarrant County College, in Texas. When neither writing nor teaching … oh, who are we kidding? She’s almost always writing and teaching. And watching TV (being an addict). It helps her rest up from the writing. And the teaching. She loves to talk about her writing (and TV), whether that’s attractive or not. Check out her Web site at www.evelynvaughn.com

J.C. Vaughn is an expatriate adopted Texan living near Baltimore. He is the co-writer of the comic books 24, based on the hit Fox TV series, and Shi. He is the creator of McCandless & Company, and is also the creator of S.F.P.D., which first appeared in 2002’s acclaimed Comic Book Legal Defense Fund benefit book, More Fund Comics. His short story “The Flight” was selected for the 2001 Breaking Boundaries anthology, and he made his film acting debut in the award-winning short “Some Trouble of a SeRRious Nature” in 2002. Vaughn is the author of more than 500 articles and columns in the collectibles field and serves as executive editor of Gemstone Publishing, where he works on such projects as The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, Hake’s Price Guide To Character Toys, Overstreet’s Comic Price Review and the weekly Scoop e-mail newsletter.

Susan Vaught lives with her family and her many pets (including a very bossy parrot) on a small poultry farm in Western Kentucky. She works as Director of Psychological Services at a state psychiatric hospital, and spends her evenings and weekends furiously scribbling and typing life into novels, short stories, and poems. She has written a number of fantasies for young adults, including the award-winning and historical Stormwitch and the epic Oathbreaker books: Assassin’s Apprentice and Prince Among Killers, co-authored with her son JB Redmond. She has also written Trigger, Big Fat Manifesto, Exposed, and Going Underground, all contemporary novels drawing from her experiences and her work as a neuropsychologist. Her upcoming contemporary release from Bloomsbury USA, Freaks Like Us, will hit the shelves in September 2012.

BenBella Books has been publishing resources for the plant-based community since the release of Dr. T. Colin and Thomas Campbell’s groundbreaking book, The China Study, nearly 10 years ago. BenBella’s vegan line includes a broad range of cookbooks and other resources for leading a plant-based lifestyle. Visit benbellavegan.com to learn more.