Author Bios

Alex V. Cook is a Baton Rouge-based music critic and author. He listens to everything and writes about most of it. The full effect can be had at www.alexvcook.com.

Artist, writer, and designer Anna Macedo dwells in a pea-green house on an oak-shaded street deep in mysterious Louisiana, with her dog, Satchel, and his two cats, Bubble and Squeak. She and her works can be seen at www.annamacedo.com. Satch can be seen by appointment.

Anne Butler is a former editor of Country Roads and has contributed articles for the magazine from the very beginning (Yikes! Can she be THAT old??). The author of more than a dozen books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, she specializes in extolling the virtues of South Louisiana's unique cultural heritage and oddball characters, cuisine and even crime. She has a BA in English from Sweet Briar College in Virginia, MA in English from Humboldt State University in California, but she's really just a glorified storyteller. She lives in St. Francisville where she offers tours and B&B at her historic home, Butler Greenwood Plantation.

Anne Craven is putting her French degree to great use as assistant editor of Country Roads magazine. She attempts to sneak words and phrases en français into the magazine whenever possible, usually hiding them in the depths of the calendar of events. A Baton Rouge native and long-time Country Roads devotée, Anne ran off after college to live in France and other exotic places (like Massachusetts and Tennessee). Since her return to the River Road region, she'll tell anyone who stands still long enough that Country Roads magazine is unique in this world and is her local raison d'être.  

Cheré Coen is a freelance food and travel writer in Lafayette and co-author of Cooking in Cajun Country.

Courtney Taylor has written two cookbooks: How to Eat Like a Southerner and Live to Tell the Tale, Clarkson Potter, 1990 and The Southern Cook's Handbook, Quail Ridge Press, 1999. A food journalist for almost twenty years, her work has appeared in national magazines such as Bon Appetit, Woman's Magazine, and Budget Living Magazine. As a newspaper food columnist and feature writer, her features were syndicated nationally for ten years. She has been a spokesperson for White Lilly Flour and has appeared on the Today Show. She is currently a free lance writer covering anything from new ways to cook collard greens to ghosts of Natchez, Mississippi.

A native of historic Natchez, Mississippi where she lives with her husband two children in what she calls an on-going preservation project, Taylor is also the marketing director for Natchez Pilgrimage Tours and urges all who read this to visit her lovely historic home town and see for yourself what preservation can do.

Dale grew up on a farm in Iowa, but knew early on that agronomy was not in his blood. Especially after the summer he helped his grandpa castrate the hogs. They don’t like that at all and it makes you feel really ashamed for what you’ve done.

Fortunately the farm happened to be outside Iowa City, a surprisingly sophisticated community, owed in part perhaps to the fact that it plays host to the University of Iowa’s world renowned Iowa Writers Workshop. And it is from that university that he earned a degree in film.

Soon after he found himself in Lafayette, Louisiana, at a local TV station directing an early morning program that was half in English half in Cajun French, and discovered that all those credit hours of college French were mostly tuition down the drain.

Years go by and Dale bounces from television to the ad agency biz and back, and then takes a leap of faith to enter the world of magazine editing.  And here at Country Roads he at last finds his tribe. And a way to at least abstractly reconnect with his country roots.

In addition to his duties as Managing Editor at Country Roads, Dale and his partner Dave also own a bed and breakfast in New Orleans.

Ed O'Rourke, Jr. and Leon Standifer are the authors of Gardening in the Humid South (LSU Press, 2002) so they've learned a thing or two over the years about what does and doesn't work in the garden.

Frank McMains is a Baton Rouge based writer and photographer who focuses on food, travel and cultural peculiarity. He holds a degree in Religious Studies and a Master of Business of Administration but does his level best to avoid applying either. McMains has variously tried his hand at magazine publication, record promotion, home building and being a publican, as well as a stint in an investment brokerage. But, he has found that he is most happy when interacting with world through a camera, notepad and appetite. McMains has contributed work to various publications ranging from the Los Angeles Times to the web 2.0 dynamic news platform Now Public. He blogs at Country Roads magazine (The Good Feast) and at www.lemonsandbeans.com.

James Fox-Smith is executive editor of Country Roads magazine. Each month Country Roads explores the region's art, music, cuisine, history, people, architecture, outdoor adventures, hidden treasures, myths and legends and fact and fiction. It's his job to make sure it all makes sense. Born in England and raised in Australia, James has lived in Louisiana for fifteen years.

Jan Risher went around the world to get from Mississippi to Louisiana-- with stops in between ranging from the mountains of Slovakia, the streets of Paris, a tribal village in Burkina Faso to the hills of central Mexico. The Mississippi native has made her home in Lafayette since 2001. A columnist for The Daily Advertiser and former managing editor of The Times of Acadiana, Jan is now a full-time teacher. She's also the mother of two daughters, ages 12 and 7. She loves reading, cooking, entertaining -- and food in general.

Some of her life's stranger moments have included Chanda Lear (daughter of the man who built the Lear Jet -- yes, he named his daughter Chanda) knocking on the door of Jan's office and proceeding to explain that she wanted to audition for a street performer's license and subsequently singing "High Hopes." On another day, she was running in the dark down a dirt road toward the Dakar, Senegal airport at 2 a.m. as 32 children chased her and screamed, "Madam, Madam." Both are rather long stories. If you ever run into Jan and are curious, with very little encouragement, she'll be happy to tell you either (or both).

Jeanne Frois is a freelance writer based in the New Orleans area who has been the co-editor of three editions of the Louisiana AlmanacLouisianians All and The Flags of Louisiana. Her regular feature "Around Louisiana" appears in Louisiana Life magazine, her work has also appeared in Southern Living magazine, New Orleans magazine, The New Orleans Times-Picayune and is the author of the books newspaper, and other periodicals.

Freelance writer Jeremy Alford has been contributing to Country Roads since 2003 and is considered to be a loose-yet-valuable cannon by the editorial staff. He’ll write about practically anything, from soul food to painting, but is drawn most often to the cultural pantheon of south Louisiana. By day, he’s a freelance journalist on the Bayou State’s political beat and feeds news to a syndication of local newspapers and magazines. During his time as a scribe-for-hire, Alford has also contributed to The New York Times, Dallas Morning News and Associated Press. He’s won several regional and statewide awards for his work. Around the office, we call him “Kahuna.” Jeremy lives in Baton Rouge with his lovely wife, Karron, and their social experiment in parenting, the adorable Zoe. He has a Web site with stories about pirates, corrupt politicians and other info that simply won’t fit here. So jump on over to www.jeremyalford.com.

Lucile Bayon Hume teaches English at Hinds Community College.

Mary Ann Sternberg, Baton Rouge-based writer and author of Along The River Road and Winding Through Time, looks for excuses to explore the River Road and south Louisiana.

Ruth Laney’s work has appeared in national magazines including Family Circle, Sports Illustrated for Kids, and Travel & Leisure. She is a stringer for People magazine and the Reuters news agency. A member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, she has covered major sports competitions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia (including several Olympics), for magazines, wire services, and newspapers. She wrote and coproduced the television documentary Ernest J. Gaines: Louisiana Stories, which won an award from the National Association for State and Local History and was shown at the New Orleans and Orinda (California) film festivals. She is currently completing a book, Cherie Quarters: The Place and the People, about the place where Gaines grew up, which is the setting for his fiction. She writes the Country Roads column Antiquarians, about people who are in love with the past. She looks for subjects consumed by a passion for history and a desire to inhabit the mysterious realm of the long-ago. She lives in Baton Rouge, where she collects Louisiana books and art, textiles, watermelon tchotchkes, and cobalt-blue glass. Reach her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Sam Irwin, a Baton Rouge resident, is the press secretary for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry. He is also editor of the Louisiana Market Bulletin farm journal. When he is not writing about row crops, livestock and cropdusting, he is riding his Specialized Rockhopper mountain bike along the swampy trails of north Baton Rouge.

After a largely aimless life, (he has taught history, sold used cars, operated a grocery store, crawfish plant, record store [the legendary Paradise Records at LSU], booked the best Cajun bands of South Louisiana at the notorious Corner Bar honky-tonk in Breaux Bridge, toured folks around an antebellum plantation home and issued loans during that unfortunate period when he tried pawnbroking) Sam discovered the backspace and delete key of his computer and began writing.

Sam also freelances for several Louisiana regional magazines, including House and Home and Country Roads magazines. He was a stringer for the Baton Rouge Advocate newspaper before taking his cushy state press secretary job. His fiction has been published by Dead Mule, Tom’s Voice, Spillway Review, Long Story Short, Gris Gris Rouge, Country Roads Online and the Nicholls State Jubilee Anthology.

"Katrina Baptism," a gruesome short story about a New Orleans street musician, who accidentally dismembers his best friend, won first place honors at the Cape Fear Crime Festival in 2008. His latest publication, "Message in an Oyster Shell,” is included in book form in the new short story anthology “Love is on the Wind” from Second Wind Publishing.

Alas, Sam’s comic crime novel, The Ransom of Red Goat is stuck in a cosmic slush pile awaiting the correct alignment of the stars and publication.

Sam claims three Louisiana cities as his hometowns--Breaux Bridge, Lafayette and Baton Rouge-- but keeps a special place in his heart for the fishing community of Henderson.

He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

William G. Osborne III is currently the Director of Curriculum Development for the LSU Honors College. He is also an artist, writer, and creative projects manager, with graduate degrees in Art and Philosophy.