Special Guests

Author, speaker and singer Susan Maxwell Skinner was raised in New Zealand. As a child in this Commonwealth outpost, she saw the Queen on royal visits.

From the age of 16, she trained as a reporter on the country's largest newspaper, the New Zealand Herald. As she rose through the ranks to feature writing, royal visits became her "beat". The young reporter curtseyed to most of the Windsor family. By the time Prince Charles made his final bachelor tours, Susan was already a popular columnist. On assignment in London for The Wedding, she encountered Lady Diana Spencer. Meeting the teenage royal fiancee, Susan realized: "for the first time, here was a member of the Royal Family who seemed just like the rest of us. Days later, in St Paul's Cathedral I saw her become a princess."

Diana fever gripped the world and Susan remained in the Buckingham Palace press corps for eight years. During that time, she wrote a book and hundreds of magazine articles about Diana and her growth into the world's most powerful celebrity. As the Wales' became ambassadors for Britain, the writer traveled the world in Diana's footsteps and developed a real compassion for the young superstar.

Romance at last lured the scribe to the USA, where she married Sacramento bandleader/pilot John Skinner. In California, Susan studied music and became a professional singer. The royal link was resumed after Princess Diana died. London publishers begged the author to repaint the colorful Diana years in a second book, "Diana, an English Rose". Susan's third book, "Diana, Memory of a Rose", shares an insider's view of the Diana Years and Diana's greatest achievement: the raising of her children and her mission to bring love to peoples' lives.

After performing in local T.V. and theatre in his home town of Sacramento, CA, John Mazurek moved to New York to try his hand there. He's since performed Off-Broadway with The Actor's Company Theatre, live Shakespeare in Central Park, played the role of Lenny in Of Mice and Men at Horse Cave Theatre in Kentucky (one of his favorite roles ever) and is currently proud to be part of Poetry Alive!. He's also worked on soaps, with Fox Television, and been in more commercials than he can remember. Look for him in the upcoming film The Stepford Wives with Nicole Kiddman. Don't blink, though.

An Alumna of Case Western Reserve University and the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Camille has worked in the theatre as an actress, producer and vocal coach. Before touring with Poetry Alive! she was the head of the Voice and Speech Department at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and an adjunct professor at Marymount Manhattan College, both in New York city. A classically trained actress, her favorite roles include the title role in Lysistrata, Desdemona in Othello, and Hecuba in Trojan Women. Camille has also appeared in various roles in film and television.