SPEAKERS

BEN BIZZLE

Founder and CEO of the marketing and web development firm, Library Market. He’s a 2013 Library Journal Mover&Shaker and John Cotton Dana Award winner, author of the book, Start a Revolution: Stop Acting Like a Library, and for over 7 years, served as the director of technology and head of the creative team at Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

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From programming to purchasing, from your website and bookstore to the reference desk, every library, in every action, is telling a story to its community. What story is your library telling?

Join library advocate, marketer, author, and entrepreneur, Ben Bizzle as he discusses the stories libraries tell, how we tell those stories, and ways to enhance the stories we are telling to our communities. 

Mark T. Sullivan

Mark Sullivan is the acclaimed author of more than twenty novels, including the #1 Amazon Charts, Wall Street Journal, NYT and USA Today bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky, which has been translated into thirty-seven languages and will soon be a limited television series starring Tom Holland. Mark also writes the #1 New York Times bestselling Private series with James Patterson.

 An avid skier and adventurer, he lives with his wife in Bozeman, Montana, where he remains grateful for the miracle of every moment. 

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From the author of the #1 bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky comes a new historical novel inspired by one family’s incredible story of daring, survival, and triumph.

In late March 1944, as Stalin’s forces push into Ukraine, young Emil and Adeline Martel must make a terrible decision: Do they wait for the Soviet bear’s intrusion and risk being sent to Siberia? Or do they reluctantly follow the wolves—murderous Nazi officers who have pledged to protect “pure-blood” Germans?

The Martels are one of many families of German heritage whose ancestors have farmed in Ukraine for more than a century. But after already living under Stalin’s horrifying regime, Emil and Adeline decide they must run in retreat from their land with the wolves they despise to escape the Soviets and go in search of freedom.

Caught between two warring forces and overcoming horrific trials to pursue their hope of immigrating to the West, the Martels’ story is a brutal, complex, and ultimately triumphant tale that illuminates the extraordinary power of love, faith, and one family’s incredible will to survive and see their dreams realized.

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