Christopher Scanlan and Katharine Fair

Christopher Scanlan and Katharine Fair are a husband-and-wife writing team. Scanlan is senior faculty in writing at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, and director of the National Writers Workshops. Fair is an award-winning advertising copywriter and a substitute teacher.

For two decades, Scanlan was an award-winning feature writer for the St. Petersburg Times, national correspondent for Knight-Ridder Newspapers and reporter for the Providence Journal.   The Holly Wreath Man was inspired by a true story he reported more than 25 years ago.

Scanlan produces "Chip on Your Shoulder," a writing advice column on Poynter's website (http://poynter.org/shoulder). He edited seven volumes of Best Newspaper Writing, an annual collection of prize-winning stories used in newsrooms and college journalism classes, and has coached writers around the world.

His articles, fiction and essays have appeared in Redbook, The American Scholar, The Washington Post Magazine, The Boston Globe Magazine, Catholic Digest, The Christian Science Monitor, Tampa Tribune Fiction Quarterly, Salon.com, Mississippi Review Web, Elysian Fields Quarterly, and "Telling Stories, Taking Risks: Journalism Writing at the Century's Edge." He is also the author of a textbook, "Reporting and Writing: Basics for the 21^st Century," (Oxford University Press) and co-editor of "America's Best Newspaper Writing." (Bedford/St. Martin's)