HONORARY ADVISORS: Marion Bethel, David Crystal, Björn Jernudd, Larry Smith, Edwin Thumboo, Olga Walló

MARION BETHEL (Nassau, Bahamas)
Marion Bethel was born and lives in Nassau, The Bahamas. She read law at the University of Cambridge, England and has worked as an attorney since 1986.

Her writing includes poetry, short stories and essays. Her work has appeared in Junction, an anthology of Bahamian prose and poetry, Lignum Vitae, a journal of the Bahamas Writers' Association, From The Shallow Seas, an anthology of Bahamian prose and poetry published by Casa de Las Americas, Habana, Cuba (1993), The Massachusetts Review, Autumn-Winter (1994), The Caribbean Writer, Volume 8 (1994) and Moving Beyond Boundaries, Volume 1, Pluto Press (1995). Her work has been accepted for publication in the following literary journals: Callaloo, River City, Poui, MaComere, The Hampden Sidney Poetry Review, Thamyris. She edited "Poetry from the Bahamas" a special section of The Caribbean Writer, Vol. 13, 1999. The section was nominated for the Puschcart Prize.

Ms Bethel has been a guest writer at several international events, including the Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars Conference, Florida International University, Miami, Fla. in April 1996, the Miami International Book Fair in November 1997, the Caribbean Women Writers Series at Duke University, North Carolina in February 2002 and the XVI International Poetry Festival of Medellin in June 2006 in Medellin, Colombia. In June 2005 she began a three-part poetry workshop at Cave Canem held at the University of Pittsburgh. In October 2006 she was a guest writer at the International Writers Workshop at the Hong Kong Baptist University in Hong Kong.

Ms Bethel was awarded a James Michener Fellowship by the Caribbean Writers Summer Institute in the Department of English of the University of Miami, Florida in July 1991 and the Casa de las Americas Prize for a volume of poetry called Guanahani, My Love which was published in a bilingual edition (Spanish/English) in 1995. From September 1997 to August 1998 she was the Alice Proskauer Poetry Fellow at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, Harvard University. Ms Bethel is now completing a poetry manuscript and doing research for a novel.


DAVID CRYSTAL (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Wales)
David Crystal held a chair at the University of Reading for 10 years, and is now Honorary Professor of Linguistics at the University of Bangor.

His creative writing includes volumes of devotional poetry; a biography of the Bon Sauveur foundation in Wales; a play, Living On (on the theme of endangered languages); and he has edited the poetry of the African missionary, John Bradburne.

His autobiography, Just a Phrase I'm Going Through, was published in 2009.

David Crystal's authored works are mainly in the field of language, including several Penguin books, but he is perhaps best known for his two encyclopedias for Cambridge University Press, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Recent authored books include By Hook or By Crook: a Journey in Search of English (2007), Think on My Words: Exploring Shakespeare's Language (2008) and Txtng: the Gr8 Db8 (2008). Co-authored books include Words on Words with his wife and business-partner, Hilary (2000 - Wheatley Medal, 2001), and, in collaboration with his actor son, Ben, Shakespeare's Words (2002) and The Shakespeare Miscellany (2005).

His books on English phonetics and phonology include Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English and The English Tone of Voice. His clinical books include Introduction to Language Pathology, Profiling Linguistic Disability, Clinical Linguistics, and Linguistic Encounters with Language Handicap. His work for schools includes the Skylarks, Databank, and Datasearch programmes, Nineties Knowledge, Language A to Z, Rediscover Grammar, Discover Grammar, and Making Sense of Grammar.

He was founder-editor of the Journal of Child Language, Child Language Teaching and Therapy, and Linguistics Abstracts, and has edited several book series, such as Penguin Linguistics and Blackwell's Language Library.

David Crystal has been a consultant, contributor, or presenter on several radio and television programmes and series.

David Crystal is currently patron of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) and the Association for Language Learning (ALL), president of the UK National Literacy Association, and an honorary vice-president of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, the Institute of Linguists, and the Society for Editors and Proofreaders. He is a past honorary president of the National Association for Professionals concerned with Language-Impaired Children, the International Association of Forensic Phonetics, and the Society of Indexers.

He was Sam Wanamaker Fellow at Shakespeare's Globe in 2003-4 and was honorary president of the Johnson Society for 2005-6. He has also been a member of the Board of the British Council and of the English-Speaking Union, and is currently vice-chair of the ESU's English Language Committee. He received an OBE for services to the English language in 1995, and was made a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2000.


BJÖRN JERNUDD (China, Sweden, Hong Kong, USA)
Björn Jernudd is based in Beijing where his wife is a managing partner of the Beijing office of ReedSmith (a US law firm). He retired from his position as a chair professor of linguistics at the Hong Kong Baptist University in 2002; and his latest academic assignment was as a visiting professor to the education faculty at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur for a period in 2008. He has worked as an administrator, teacher and researcher at universities, research and research grants institutions in Australia, the Middle East and North Africa, USA and Asia. His discipline is linguistics, and within it, he is especially interested in the theory of language management, relating to language planning and language cultivation practices, to individuals' management of discourse and to language policy processes.

Björn Jernudd's recent appointment as a linguistics expert to the International Criminal Court in the Hague sharply places in focus relationships of language management to suffering as to expressions of joy and sharing of experience. He began his sociolinguistic work by exploring social differentiation of inventiveness of slang in Stockholm. Next he found himself exploring changing language use in Darfur in the Sudan. These early field experiences led to his interest in language planning and language management – now taken full circle back to the unfolding events in the Sudan.


LARRY E. SMITH (USA)
In 1985 Larry E. Smith was Founding Editor (with Braj B. Kachru) of World Englishes, Wiley-Blackwell, and continues as Editor and Advisor for this journal. He was a researcher and administrator at the East-West Center, Hawaii for more than two decades and is executive director of the International Association for World Englishes, Inc., a professional non-profit organization.

He is the author and co-author of books, book-chapters, professional journal articles, and entries in encyclopedias.  

His co-authored books include: Cultures, Contexts and World Englishes (with Yamuna Kachru), New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008; Value Conflicts in Thai Society: Agonies of Change Seen in Short Stories (with Suvanna Kriengkraipetch) Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 1991; Leadership Training Through Gaming: Power, People and Problem Solving (with Elizabeth Christopher) London: Kogan Page, 1987, Negotiation Training Through Gaming: Strategies, Tactics, and Manoeuvres (with  Elizabeth Christopher) London: Kogan Page, 1991.  

His edited books include: Transnational Asia Pacific: Gender, Culture, and the Public Sphere (with Shirley G. L. Lim and Wimal Dissanayake) Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1999; World Englishes 2000: (with Michael L. Forman), Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1997 and Discourse Across Cultures: Strategies in World Englishes, London: Prentice Hall, 1987;   

His book chapters and journal articles have been published in China, Germany, Japan, Russia, the UK and the USA.


EDWIN THUMBOO (Singapore)
Edwin Thumboo has won many writing honours, including the NBC, Singapore, Book Award for Poetry in English (1978, 1980 and 1994), Southeast Asia Writer Award (1979), Singapore Cultural Medallion (1980), ASEAN Cultural and Communication Award in Literature (1987), the Raja Rao Award (2002), the Meritorious Service Medal, Singapore (2006), International Association for World Englishes Distinguished Service Award (2008). Fellow of the International Writing Programme, University of Iowa (1977).

Emeritus Professor and Professorial Fellow Edwin Thumboo, National University of Singapore, has been involved in Singapore's literary developments since 1951: editing, anthologising, initiating literary programmes.

He published Rib of Earth (1956), Gods Can Die (1977), Ulysses by the Merlion (1979), A Third Map (1993), Friend (2003), Still Traveling (2008), Bring the Sun (2008), Child's Delight 1 & Child's Delight 2 (1972), and is working on a selection for translation into Chinese. Studies of his work include Ee Tiang Hong, Responsibility and Commitment: The Poetry of Edwin Thumboo (1997) and Peter Nazareth, Edwin Thumboo: Creating a Nation through Poetry (2008).


OLGA WALLÓ (Czech Republic)
Olga Walló earned her PhDr degree in Philosophy and Psychology at Prague Charles University. She has worked for Czech TV for 35 years as a translator and dubbing director (more than 1,000 films and playwrights, including ten plays from the BBC production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare). She has translated plays and novels and has taught dubbing at the Academy of Art. Her published work includes her Collected Poems 1958-98, the five-novel cycle, Towers of St. Spirit, and a true-story about cancer, The Secondary Profits. Her short stories and essays have appeared in periodicals. She has regularly collaborated with the journal, Krásná paní (a cultural and educational life-style women's journal), where she contributes essays on philosophical aspects of every-day life. She spends a lot of time travelling. Following a visit to Burma in late 2008, her illustrated book Pohled profesionálního pr?vodce ("Seen by a Professional Tour-leader"), which merges psychological story with geographical, poetic and historic facts, will appear in 2009. Her autobiographical novel will be published for the first time in English translation by Proverse Hong Kong in 2009/2010.

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