Kensington Park’s Annual Speaker Series: Local Author Spotlight 

Susan Coll is a local author who has written Bookish People, The Stager, Beach Week, Acceptance, Rockville Pike, and karlmarx.com. Her novel, Acceptance, was made into a television movie starring Joan Cusack. Susan is the president of the PEN/Faulkner foundation, teaches an intensive year-long novel workshop at The Writer’s Center, and is the Events Advisor at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC.

Paul Dickson has been an independent writer for more than 50 years, during which time he has produced more than 60 non-fiction books and numerous newspaper and magazine articles. Dickson’s most recent book, The Rise of the G.I. Army 1940-1941, is the dramatic, untold story of how the American Army was mobilized from scattered outposts two years before Pearl Harbor into the disciplined and mobile fighting force that helped win World War II.

Bob Levey is a prize-winning journalist who has covered the Washington scene since the Johnson Administration. For 23 years, he wrote a daily column, “Bob Levey’s Washington,” for The Washington Post. Bob Levey is the author of Washington Album: A Pictorial History of the Nation’s Capital; Washington: City on a Hill; and Larry Felder, Candidate.

Daniel de Visé is the author of I Forgot to Remember, Andy and Don, The Comeback, and King of the Blues. He shared a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his journalism and has worked at The Washington Post and Miami Herald, among other newspapers. 

 Philip Padgett spent forty years working in national security and preparedness analysis in the military, government and private sector. In his retirement, Padgett joined the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Reserve Corps and assisted in national emergencies such as Superstorm Sandy. His book, Advocating Overlord: The D-Day Strategy and the Atomic Bomb, offers a fresh look at the story of how in 1943 Great Britain and the U.S. struggled to craft and agree on strategy to liberate Europe from the west.