Faith Tupper
Faith Tupper has been a teacher in Rapides Parish for ten years. She attended Louisiana State University at Alexandria, where she earned her Bachelors of Arts in English with a minor in Secondary Education and was a member of student government as well as Sigma Tau Delta. Upon graduating, she began her teaching career at Rapides High in Lecompte, Louisiana, where she filled many roles in addition to being an English teacher. In 2014, she was a recipient of the Belfer Award for Educators given by the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. In 2015, she was named the Alexandria Veterans of Foreign Wars Teacher of the Year. In 2016, she was a recipient of the Golden Apple Award as well as named Teacher of the Year for Rapides High School.
She earned her Masters in Educational Leadership from Northwestern State University in 2017 and was a member of the Louisiana Honor Society Phi Kappa Phi. In 2019, she began teaching at her alma mater Pineville High School, and is where she currently teaches and has been a top 5 finalist for Teacher of the Year for 2022 and 2023. She currently serves as a Task Force Team Member for Rapides Parish School Board. Beyond teaching, Faith spends her time with her husband and their 3 children whether it’s taking trips or attending one of the kids’ ball games or finding adventure in the backyard.
Jennifer Earnest-King
Jennifer Earnest-King is a lifelong resident of Louisiana and is a graduate of LSUA. She has worked for the Rapides Parish Library for fifteen years. She has been published in the Southwestern Review and the Jongleur. Her writing is sporadic at best.
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Thomas S. Smith, Sr., PhD
Thomas S. Smith, Sr., PhD, is an independent K-16 educator, grant writer, tutor, speaker, and author, retired after serving 33-years as an educator in Avoyelles Parish Public Schools and 7 years as a full-time education faculty member at Baker College of Auburn Hills in Michigan. Smith earned a BA from UL-Monroe, a MEd and MA from LSU, and a PhD from the University of New Orleans. He has presented at Louisiana and Michigan education conferences, plus regional and national education conferences.
Smith has self-published ten books—seven in the JUST A PIECE OF RED STRING novel series, THE O SUILLEABHAIN MANUSCRIPTS, COSMIC VISITANTS, and THE PARAPROSDOKIAN SHOP. He is a Goethe Institut Inter Nationes Trans-Atlantic Outreach Program Fellow, a United States Institute of Peace Summer Institute for Secondary Teachers Fellow, and a Council for Basic Education’s Independent Study in the Humanities Fellow. Smith was selected as the Rapides Parish Library Cenla Author of the month of September in 2023.
Jeanni Ritchie
Jeanni Ritchie is a freelance journalist and author from Alexandria, Louisiana. A former educator, she is a graduate of Bolton High School and LSU. She has four grown children. Her love of teaching and all things juvenile spurred her to get a Master’s Degree in Education while living in Oklahoma.
Promoting mental health positivity, heritage preservation, and equal rights for all citizens, she strives to use her voice for change. Writing from the intersection of community, faith, and pop culture, she is also a Tiktok creator and can be found at tiktok.com/@jeanniritchie. She is a lifelong theatre fan, pizza aficionado, arts- in-education supporter, and perennial Peter Pan. If she’s not at her desk writing, she’s likely on a playground swing or crossing something off her bucket list.
Lafe Jones
Lafe Jones is the Vice President of Louisiana Central, the regional economic development organization for the 10-parish central Louisiana region. He brings more than 35 years of business planning, marketing, and management experience to the organization.
Lafe Jones grew up in Avoyelles Parish and later attended LSU of Alexandria before transferring to LSU-Baton Rouge where he earned his Bachelor's Degree in mass communication. He earned an Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) in 1997 and was named a Senior Practitioner of the Southern Public Relations Federation in 1998. He also won the Public Relations Association of Louisiana (PRAL) state Professional Achievement Award that same year. Jones is an avid country music fan, enjoys great art, theater, literature, and movies, and is married to Evelyn Jones. They live in Alexandria and have two grown children and two granddaughters.
Kate Hodnett
Kate Hodnett is a Cenla native and an LSUA alumni. She has had nonfiction short stories published 4 separate times in the National Best-Selling Book Series "Chicken Soup for the Soul." She was voted as one of Louisiana's Best Emerging Poets for 2 consecutive years through ZPublishing House.
F.E. Sterling
After 35+ years working in the Mental-Health field, as a MS Behaviorist-Psychologist, F. E. Sterling threw in the towel and retired. During those rewarding years, most every word he put to the page was, by necessity, scientifically based—until another necessity required that he employ a different language to address what Behaviorists rarely talk about the inner workings of the “black box”. Since then, he’s had works published in New Voices In Poetry and Prose, Mobius, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken and Louisiana Review.
Mary F. Striegel
Mary F. Striegel is a retired art conservation scientist from the National Park Service. Since the age of seven, Mary has written and performed poetry. She was part of the Los Angeles Poetry Ensemble from 1989 to 1995 with Ann Braeff, Ellyn Maybe, Gwynne Garfinkle, and Christa Polkinhorn.
Richard Moriarty
Richard Moriarty is 86 years old, still working every day, as a manager for the same employer with whom he has been employed for now going on 65 years. [The oldest tenured employee in the history of the firm.
He has been awarded every honor that a person could possibly achieve in business: Who’s Who in Government, Who’s Who in Finance & Industry, Who’s Who in America, the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award [with special citation], and twice received the Charles Dunbar Public Service Award, as well as the Service Above Self award from the Lecompte Rotary Club. In addition, elected the Senior Warden of St. James Episcopal Church in Alexandria.
Billy K. Craig
Billy K. Craig is a lifelong resident of Rapides Parish, living between Pineville and Kolin. He started writing poetry and songs around the age of 15. He also dabbled in art, painting, and drawing and ended up detailing steel (drafting structural steel for commercial buildings).
His current influences are Billy Collins, Kay Ryan, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Charles Butkowski. His older influences are Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Percy Bysshe Shelly, and Robert Frost.
