Meet the panelists
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Chris Berg is an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he will eventually graduate with BAs in Psychology and Film/Video Production. When he isn't enjoying various media, he likes to spend his time desperately searching for a job. Other than Barely Literate, Chris lends his voice to his local college radio station, and was the co-host of the now-somewhat-dead show The News Cruise, which can be found on the internet here. He also is a rather active Twitterer, so you can follow him on it if you're into that sort of thing.
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Andrew Bonham is currently completing a PhD in Biochemistry at UC Santa Barbara, with hopes to one day be a university level lecturer. Most of his free time is spent digging into computers, playing board and roleplaying games, and, of course, reading. His greatest reading dislike is incoherence — of the world, the plot, or the narrative. Then again, perhaps this preference reflects on the steady stream of science fiction and philosophy texts that fills most of his reading queue.
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Joe Coughlin was a lifelong resident of Bucks County, PA until he moved to the magical world of Delaware. His favorite book is the novelization of the film The Karate Kid by BB Hiller, but he thinks Hiller really should have done a better job adapting The Karate Kid Part II. He has no blog for public consumption at the moment, but you may feel free to add him as a Twitter friend.
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Corey Close is from the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. He is a Telecommunication and Film Studies major at Eastern Michigan University in beautiful Ypsilanti, Michigan. He spends his creative energy running and contributing to Trapper, a comedy thing, and hopes to move out to Los Angeles in a few months. He likes reading and writing. Arithmetic, less so.
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Jim Dempsey has been reading constantly as long as he can remember, after being taught at a very young age what escape and adventure can be found deciphering various squiggles and dots. He put that predilection to predictable use earning a BA in English 20 years ago. Since then, he has been reading, working briefly as a legal secretary, reading, working for over 15 years as a professional mariner, reading, and lately working to perfect a lifestyle that delivers the most reward for the least effort while providing at least enough money to buy even more books. To read.
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Andrew Dimitrov is a video artist, atheistic post-humanist and graduate student in Media Studies at The New School in New York. Despite a cheery outlook his main literary tastes are generally experiments in morbidity and bleak philosophies. He has an excessively detailed knowledge of Kubrick. He is the founder of the Meat Picnic experimental video collective.
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Jason Eaken graduated with a BFA in acting from the University of Central Missouri, where he learned that if you're not acting hard, you're hardly acting. Now, he lives in Kansas City, writing and directing short films and making stacks of cash in the insurance game (you know the one). He co-hosted the podcast Experts and Intermediates. He lives alone, to the shock and befuddlement of all who know him, where he completes manual labor for his blog.
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Benjamin Ahr Harrison is a music video director and screenwriter from the Bay Area. He currently resides in Brooklyn, where he enjoys reading sci-fi and cook books. His favorite type of alcohol is gin, but he usually can't afford it, so he mostly drinks the Pilsner made at the Brooklyn Brewery. And shitloads of coffee.
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Colin Marshall is the host of Barely Literate and the proprietor of this very web site. He happens to double as the host of the public radio program The Marketplace of Ideas, triple as a blogger on matters cultural, quadruple as The Sound of Young America's resident Podthinker and quintuple as the author of "The Humanists", 3Quarksdaily's film column. One can, if one must, follow him on Twitter. See also colinmarshall.org.
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Matt McIntosh is an undergraduate student from Ontario, Canada, about whom much can be deduced from the fact that he's made three changes of major — from computer science to neurobiology to physics — in as many years. When he's not struggling against the institutional current to live the anachronistic life of the natural philosopher (think Alhazen, Leibniz or Claude Bernard), he reads poetry and literature irrespective of genre so long as it's illuminating and adroitly written. He likes his red wine like he likes his weather and wit — dry. (Also, he journals.)
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Nina Salvador wrote about being addicted to books in her application essay to the University of California. UC Santa Barbara was crazy enough to accept her, where she studied geography and environmental studies and developed a minor obsession with integrated waste management, a.k.a. garbage. She reads far too many sci-fi and classic books in between reading webcomics, playing Nethack and dabbling in grassroots environmental activism. She currently lives in the Bay Area.
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Adam Schafer is a physical chemist currently working in the semiconductor world. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two f-ing adorable children. His book interests vary widely and are often governed by roaming through Powell's or thrift stores. His reading hero is Art Garfunkel, who has kept track of his reading since 1968; this last year he tried that and it has been more fun and informative than he thought. His primary other hobby has been building an addition on his house.
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Neal Soldofsky was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, often read to and always surrounded by books. At some point he began reading on his own, consuming large amounts of Kurt Vonnegut, Phillip K. Dick, Douglas Adams, and William Gibson when he was most impressionable. He's read a fair amount of serious literature, but he's really more fond of slightly less serious literature.
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David F. Starr is an American painter, predominantly focused on life-size figurative work dealing with themes of mythology, religion and science. Starr received a B.F.A. in 2004 from Univ. of Wisc - Stout, and continues to exhibit work. Starr is co-creator, videographer of Yoga in Wisconsin, a TV show that aired from April 2006 to September 2008, and is currently working Happy Yoga. He lives and works in Kewaunee, WI. For more info and videos visit davidfstarr.com and yogainwisconsin.com.
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Bryan Stoll is a student from Long Island, NY. Bryan now lives in Orlando going to school at the University of Central Florida studying hospitality management, hoping to one day run a theme park. No, that last thing was not a joke. You can find him on Twitter or look at his periodic updates on ThemeParkReview.com under the title "The Bryan and Adam Show".
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Mike Violette was born and raised in Connecticut, identifies as a Pittsburgher, and is currently living in rural south Georgia. He holds an M.A. in Education and works as a college administrator. Mike is a former radio and club DJ who sometimes updates a blog that's probably not worth reading. His bookshelf contains a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, and also forces many upstanding book-citizens of the book-world to live next to complete and utter trash.
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Tracy Woodward is a theater director, actor and all around nice guy. He is the co-founder and Associate Artistic Director of the Theatricians Theater Group, a theater company operating out of Hollywood, California. Tracy has been described as "punctual," "well dressed" and "polite" by his friends' parents. He is a graduate of UC Santa Barbara with a double major in Theater and Psychology.
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