Advisory Board
ANNETTE JOHN-HALL is an award-winning metro columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She was previously a features reporter and columnist focusing on music, film television and pop culture. A native of Berkeley, Calif. and a graduate of San Francisco State University, she covered professional, college and high school sports at the San Jose Mercury News, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and the Oakland Tribune. Her column appears Tuesdays and Fridays in the Inquirer’s metro section.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
TRINA MCKENNA is a writer who, in a delusional moment of megalomania, conceived of a magazine that would appeal to readers interested in intelligently written content focused on visual and performing art, culture and opinion. Having no experience in publishing, she launched the first issue of ICON in November 1992. The magazine was initially circulated only in Bucks County, but has since expanded to cover the Lehigh Valley, Main Line, Philadelphia and Hunterdon County, NJ, an area regarded as a cultural corridor. Since 1992, ICON has successfully ridden out the hard times, enjoyed the good, maintained its integrity, good design and excellent writing, and, through it all, remained unpretentious. Prior to founding ICON, Trina was Marketing Manager for Resident Publications in Manhattan. She was responsible for launching the downtown edition of The Resident, a Manhattan-based free, controlled circulation weekly newspaper.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
DIANE MCKINNEY-WHETSTONE grew up in Philadelphia, the city that is both setting and character in her five novels: “Tumbling,” “Tempest Rising,” “Blues Dancing,” “Leaving Cecil Street” and “Trading Dreams at Midnight.” Her novels have garnered many awards. Both “Leaving Cecil Street” and “Trading Dreams at Midnight” won the American Library Association (Black Caucus) Literary Award for Fiction, and “Tumbling” drew high honors from groups ranging from the Athenaeum of Philadelphia to the national Go On Girl Book Club. She has been a contributor to Essence Magazine and her work appears in the anthologies Bluelight Corner and Mending the World. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and presently teaches fiction writing there. She is also a proud graduate of West Philadelphia High School and a member of the board of directors of the WPHS Alumni Association.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
GEORGE MILLER is a writer, photographer and educator. He teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses at Temple University in newspaper reporting, magazine writing, entrepreneurial journalism and a 300-student course called “Journalism & Society.” His stories and photographs have appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, the Philadelphia Business Journal and numerous other publications and websites. Miller began his journalism career at the Philadelphia Daily News in 1994, where he worked for eleven years as a writer and photographer. He received his B.A. from Loyola College in 1993, an M.S. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1997 and a master of liberal arts degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 2003.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
ROBERT STRAUSS is a journalist whose work appears in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and the Philadelphia newspapers. He’s been a reporter for Sports Illustrated, a feature writer for the Daily News, a news producer for KYW-TV and a TV critic for the Asbury Park Press and the Inquirer. Since he was in fifth grade and wrote the classic, “The Slick Second Baseman,” Strauss has always wanted a career in writing. He is also a manic, if somewhat untalented, basketball and piano player. He loves to travel, but especially likes to country-count, a prospect that often has his children Ella (17) and Sylvia (14) rolling their eyes as they have, for instance, lunch in Liechtenstein or San Marino or a quick border crossing to Gibraltar. Strauss and his family live in Haddonfield.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
BEN YAGODA is a writer and educator. Since 1992, he’s been teaching at the University of Delaware, where he currently teaches English, journalism and writing. He has authored six books: “Will Rogers: A Biography,” The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism,” “About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made,” “The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing,” “When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech,” “For Better and/or Worse,” and his most recent, “Memoir: A History.” A 1975 graduate of Yale University, Yagoda has written for numerous publications and websites, including the New York Times, Esquire, Rolling Stone and Slate.
