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Steven W. Brallier

Steven Brallier is a both a collector and teller of stories, a quality he likely developed in his childhood on the western highlands of Kenya. The oral traditions of Luhya storytellers together with the panoply of everyday experience delighted him and his brother and sisters. In 1962, Steve and his family left Kenya and returned, permanently, to the United States. A nationally competitive runner, Steve athletic abilities and academic accomplishments resulted in a full scholarship to Cornell University.

聽After graduating from Cornell in 1975, Steve worked for two years as Director of Public Information at Anderson University. When an opportunity came to become a concert promoter, he became the founding manager of Spring House Productions in Alexandria, Indiana, and, later, for Brallier Productions in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1987, Steve became an agent for the William Morris Agency, Nashville, a position he held for twelve years. 聽In his roles as promoter and agent, Steve worked with various artists including Bill Gaither, Sandi Patty, Amy Grant, Michael W Smith, and Rich Mullins. After leaving William Morris, he, for several years, worked as an independent contractor in several roles within the entertainment industry.聽

Steve retired in 2012 and has devoted himself to writing, golf, and caring for his mountain cabin in Sewanee, Tennessee.聽 He was nearing the end of his first novel when, in late 2016, he was asked, by Adrienne and Mitka Kalinski, to write Mitka story. 聽Steve interviewed Mitka, Adrienne, their family, and friends over the span of some fifty days and accumulated more than 120 hours of audio攁nd some instances攙ideo records. He and his co-authors also studied several thousand documents, photographs, and video攎ostly primary sources攖hat bear witness to the veracity and power of Mitka Kalinski story. Published in July 2021, by Eerdmans Publishing Company, Mitka Secret has been well received in both academic and general reading circles.聽 Hailed as 渕asterfully written, 湝well researched,� 渞ich in content� and 渇ull of hope,� Mitka Kalinski story is one of the only chronicles of the experience of a child slave in a Nazi household. It was Steve great honor to bring Mitka story to life and continues to be his honor to share Mitka with the world.

Lynn G. Beck

Before Lynn G. Beck was a writer, she was a reader攁 voracious reader who would spend early summers with Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, middle years with Agatha Christie and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and teen years and beyond with virtually any work攆iction or non- that captured her fancy. It was likely this love of reading that led Lynn to choose English as her college major and that same desire and her commitment to teaching led to her pursuit of an M.A. in English from the University of Mississippi. Ironically, in the land of Faulkner and southern culture, she concentrated her graduate work on British literature and concluded her program in 1976 with a thesis on T.S. Eliot Four Quartets.

For the next three years, she indulged her love of all things English through teaching British literature to high school seniors. The sudden and unexpected death of her husband eventually led to a career shift as she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to study nursing at Belmont University. Between 1982 and 1985, she worked at various nursing jobs but eventually returned to teaching. In 1988, Lynn entered a PhD program at Vanderbilt University. She and her mentor completed one book while she was enrolled there. Lynn dissertation, Reclaiming Educational Administration as a Caring Profession, won the American Educational Research Association Division A 淒issertation of the Year� award in 1992 and was published, with few changes, as a book by the same name by Teachers College Press.

Lynn has held academic appointments at UCLA, the University of Alabama, Pacific Lutheran University, and the University of the Pacific.聽 She was awarded tenure early in her time at UCLA and moved rapidly through the ranks with an appointment of full professor with tenure in 1997. 聽At PLU and University of the Pacific, she also served as academic dean in their respective Schools of Education. She is the author or co-author of nine books and of numerous chapters, articles, reports, and grant proposals.

Lynn retired in 2017 and devoted her time to consulting and to work on Mitka Secret. In addition to contributing to the writing effort, Lynn took a leading role in researching the historical context of the story and in curating a voluminous collection of material including video records, photographs, correspondence, reflections of friends and family, and primary source material.