By Cynthia L. Louden

The Pearl S. Buck Writing Center presents

“Ready! Set! WRITE!”

Saturday, April 8, 2017 from 9am – 3 pm

in the historical Barn Culture Center

Presenters:     Orlando R. Barone, op-ed writer, poet, author and educator
Jennifer Lin, noted TV journalist and author

Registration is $75 and includes an abbreviated Writers Tour of the Pearl S. Buck’s National Historic Landmark House. Presenters will also read from their works, and have books to sell. A panel of authors & editors will take questions and offer additional writing suggestions to interested participants. Bring your own bag lunch. Coffee, tea, water will be provided. A 10% Discount on Gift Shop purchases is also included. Register for the Spring Writing Conference at www.pearlsbuck.org/writing

Opening the conference will be Orlando R. Barone, a noted op-ed writer, script writer, poet, and author of well-regarded college texts. Lonnie’s op-ed pieces appear regularly in The Philadelphia Inquirer. He wrote the best-selling text, Your Voice Is Your Business, the revised 2^nd edition of which was published by Plural Publishing in 2016. In fall 2016, Jones & Bartlett publishes his much-anticipated book, Counseling and Interviewing in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology. He is contributing author to the counseling chapter of Neurogenic Communication Disorders (Jones & Bartlett, 2013). Lonnie is the author of two novels, one of which was published online and he has two additional books awaiting publication with the Pearl S. Buck Writing Center Press.

Lonnie Barone’s original book, script, and complete lyrics to the original musical play A Musing Tale, were performed in summer 2016 by the company of the Performing Arts Training Academy in Dallas, PA. His original scripts have also been performed in the two previous shows in 2015 and 2014. Lonnie’s articles have appeared in such publications as Momentum Magazine, The Bible Today, and Human Resources.

Lonnie is on the graduate faculty of the Fox School of Business, where he teaches effective writing in his highly-rated course on business skills. He is also an instructor and leadership coach at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also instructs undergraduates in management and leadership. He presents on credibility, negotiation and conflict resolution at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Lonnie wrote, developed, produced, and is featured in video-assisted training packages in Leadership, Presentation Skills, Performance Management, Teamwork, Communication, Motivation, and Credibility.  These packages have been used by such companies as Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Exxon Mobil, The University of Pennsylvania, Plural Publishing, and the Department of Justice of California.

He is a sought-after lecturer who has conducted seminars for executive groups and community leaders throughout the USA and abroad and appeared on radio and TV talk shows. He has designed, developed, and delivered such training to clients including all branches of the U.S. Department of Defense, colleges and universities, chemical, pharmaceutical, and industrial firms, educational and public sector organizations.

Orlando Barone received his BA, magna cum laude, from Villanova University where he was class valedictorian. His master’s degree was awarded at the University of Delaware, where he earned the prestigious Unidel Fellowship for two consecutive years.

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Of our second presenter, Jennifer Lin, noted TV journalist, Connie Chung says, “Only an experienced and dogged journalist like Jennifer could possibly investigate and write such a thoroughly gripping historical personal narrative.  I was with her every step of the way—not just because my parents were born in the Shanghai area but because I shared with her so very much.  You must join her for this worthwhile journey!”

Jennifer Lin spent 31 years as a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, including stints as a correspondent in China, New York and Washington, D.C. She left the paper in 2014 to finish writing her family memoir, Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family. Her father, Dr. Paul Lin, a Philadelphia neurosurgeon, left Shanghai in 1949 and took Jennifer and two sisters back in June 1979 for a family reunion. Hours after arriving, an uncle pulled Dr. Lin aside and whispered, “Do you have any idea what happened to us after you left?” This memoir is Jennifer’s attempt to answer that question and more. She weaves oral history with archival research to tell the complicated history of the Lin family going back 150 years.

A native of Philadelphia, Jennifer lives in Doylestown with her husband, Bill Stieg, an editor at Men’s Health magazine. Her children are bicoastal with Karl Stieg working on documentary films in Los Angeles and Cory Stieg writing for the New York-based Refinery 29 women’s lifestyle website.

Jennifer weaves oral history and archival resources to dramatize 150 years of her family history. Shanghai Faithful is a multigenerational saga of the Lin family, serving as a brisk history of Christianity in China. From 19th-century missions to the churches of war-torn Shanghai and today’s thriving house churches, the book vividly brings to life a country’s turbulent history and a family’s poignant struggles. When the Cultural Revolution appears to tear the family apart, forgiveness and understanding prevail, setting the stage for a new beginning.

Lin will share with writers how she took interviews, letters, diaries, archival materials, newspaper accounts, church reports, diplomatic dispatches, genealogical records, and other primary source materials and turned them into a story about her Chinese family. Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family spans five generations and tells the sweeping history of Christianity in China through the perspective of a single Chinese family.

“In revealing the truth of how her family helped spread Christianity in China, Jennifer Lin weaves a captivating, poignant story about the nature and power of belief. This epic study shows the high price that can be paid by those who insist on holding fast to faith and family at a time when everything is at risk.” — Jeff Gammage, author of China Ghosts: My Daughter’s Journey to America, My Passage to Fatherhood

Mary Kay Magistad, creator and host of “Whose Century Is It?” podcast, former NPR and PRI China correspondent said, “Capturing the epic sweep of a turbulent Chinese century through a personal lens, Jennifer Lin tells a poignant, riveting, and deeply researched tale of her family’s journey of faith, from the nineteenth-century Chinese villager who first encountered Western missionaries to the twentieth-century Christian leaders—one working within the system and one pushing for something new. Persecuted under Communist rule, each left a mark still felt in China today, where ever more people seek something to believe in.” Likewise, says Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, of Pace University: “Jennifer Lin’s compelling narrative, often immensely emotional, will be of great interest for anyone who wishes to know about the everyday struggles of Chinese Christians as they endured persecution and suffering during the most hostile years of Mao’s rule.

For more information contact Cynthia L. Louden, Chr., Pearl S. Buck Writing Center, clouden@pearlsbuck.org or 267-421-6203.

Sponsored by the Pearl S. Buck Volunteer Association
All proceeds benefit Pearl S. Buck International