Columnists

Metro

Ken Burger Ken Burger is a native of Allendale, S.C., and a graduate of the University of Georgia. He joined The Post and Courier in 1984 and served as the paper's Washington, D.C., correspondent in the mid-1980s. From 1988 until 2008, Burger was executive sports editor and wrote an award-winning sports column. He was hailed as one of the country's best sports columnist by the Associated Press three times. He won numerous writing awards in South Carolina and was honored as S.C. Journalist of the Year in 1996. Burger published his first novel, "Swallow Savannah," in 2008. He began writing a metro column for The Post and Courier in January 2009. Read Columns

Commentary

Frank Wooten Frank Wooten, a Charleston native, is a graduate of St. Andrews High School, Trident Technical College (chemical engineering technology) and Clemson University (history major, German minor). His newspaper experience includes stints at The Post and Courier (1979-81, 82-84, 90-present), the now-defunct Baltimore News-American (1984-1985) and the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald (1986-90). He has worked at newspapers as a photographer, sportswriter, sports copy editor, sports layout man, sports editor and TV/Radio columnist. He became associate editor of The Post and Courier in 1998 and assistant editor in 2009. He writes editorials and a weekly Commentary Page column. Read Columns

Architecture and Preservation

Robert Behre Robert Behre graduated from Dartmouth College in 1985 with a degree in English and spent five years writing for the Greenville (S.C.) Piedmont before moving to Charleston in 1990. He has covered city and county government for The Post and Courier and also has served as an assistant city editor. His weekly column on architecture and preservation began in 1996. The column looks at the people and decisions involved in saving old buildings, and designing new ones that people will want to save, all with an eye toward what gives the Lowcountry its unique sense of place. Read Columns

Arts Around

Dottie Ashley Dottie Ashley reviews theater and dance and writes about local arts organizations. She is the winner of the 2003 Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Award given to the outstanding arts writer in the state, and twice won a National Partners of the Americas Journalist Fellowship to Cali and Bogota, Columbia. She worked for The State newspaper in Columbia for 15 years, where she won the 1985 American Dance Festival Critics Award. Ashley has covered the Spoleto Festival USA since its founding in 1977. She has a master's degree from the University of South Carolina. Read Columns

Gardening

Tony Bertauski Tony Bertauski, who lives in Summerville, has been sharing his gardening expertise with Post and Courier readers since August 2004. A horticulture instructor at Trident Technical College, he has a master's degree in horticulture from the University of Illinois and a bachelor's degree in plant and soil science from Southern Illinois University. Bertauski is the author of two textbooks, "Plan Graphics for the Landscape Designer" and "Designing the Landscape." Read Columns

Romance Novels

Rebekah Bradford Rebekah Bradford is a former columnist for Romantic Times magazine, a member of Romance Writer's of America, an avid reader of romantic fiction and a novelist in search of a publisher. She is a 1993 graduate of Columbia College and recently moved to Charleston from Boston where she lived for a decade. Her column for The Post and Courier was launched in 2006. Read Columns

It Beats Working

Bryce Donovan Bryce Donovan is the humor columnist for The Post and Courier. According to his mother, his weekly column is "easily the fifth or sixth best thing in the Thursday newspaper." Each week he ventures outside the building to try out new, weird and exciting things. When he's done, he sits down at a computer and writes a first-person account of just how much company time he wasted. For even more Bryce, check out his blog, The Bryce is Write. Read Columns

Food

Nathalie Dupree With 10 cookbooks and more than 300 television episodes to her credit, Nathalie Dupree is one of America's best known experts on Southern cuisine. She has been Chef of three restaurants, one in Majorca, Spain, one in Social Circle, Georgia, and one in Richmond, Virginia. She was the Director of Rich's Cooking School, a full participation cooking school in Atlanta. Today Dupree lives in Charleston with her husband, author Jack Bass. Read Columns

Books for Children

Fran Hawk Fran Hawk writes the children's books column and travel stories for The Post and Courier. Her first children's book, "The Story of the H. L. Hunley and Queenie's Coin" was published by Sleeping Bear Press in 2004. She has worked at several local schools and currently serves as the librarian at Clark Corporate Academy, and magnet high school in Charleston County. She has four children and lives with her husband in Mount Pleasant. Read Columns

Local issues

Brian Hicks Brian Hicks is a senior writer with The Post and Courier. In his 10 years with the paper, he has covered a wide variety of subjects, including politics and news of the weird (also known as politics). His reporting has won 20 S.C. Press Association Awards, including Journalist of the Year in 1998. He is also the author or co-author of four books, including the local history yarn "Raising the Hunley," which was so popular it was even translated into Czechoslovakian. Really. Read Columns

Kinship

Wevonneda Minis Wevonneda Minis writes genealogy columns and lifestyle features. She has 15 years of experience researching family history in the United States, Republic of Guinea, England, Scotland and the Bahamas. She teaches workshops for the Family History Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and serves on a Lowcountry database initiative to make 18th and 19th century records about African Americans more accessible. In addition, she is a member of the National Genealogical Society, South Carolina Genealogical Society and South Carolina Historical Society. She graduated from Regis College in Weston, Mass. and formerly covered environmental policy in Washington, D.C. Read Columns

Mystery Plant

John Nelson John Nelson, the curator of the Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, began offering his weekly "Mystery Plant" column to readers of The Post and Courier in 2005. Read Columns

Arts/Preview

Oliva Pool Oliva Pool began covering the Lowcountry's visual arts scene for the Preview section in 2006. Read Columns

Get Out

David Quick North Carolina native David Quick received a degree in English from Duke University in 1986. After a one-year stint as a reporter and photographer at the Bluefield Daily Telegraph in West Virginia, Quick came to work in Charleston as a reporter in 1988. Quick has run 15 marathons, including three Boston Marathons. Read Columns

Family Life

Brenda Rindge Brenda Rindge has worked at a variety of reporting and editing jobs for The Post and Courier and currently covers parenting and family issues for the Thursday Family Life features section. She and her husband, Post and Courier deputy sports editor Fred Rindge, are the parents of four children, giving her plenty of ideas for column topics. Read Columns

Life on the Homefront

Jennifer Berry Hawes Jennifer Berry Hawes was an award-winning features writer for The Post and Courier before she left full-time employment to stay home with her children. She writes about life as a "stay-at-home" Mom in the Home & Garden section on Sundays and the Family Life section on Tuesdays.. Read Columns

Restaurant Reviews

Deidre Schipani Deidre Schipani has a 26-year career in culinary arts, teaching and writing. For the past 10 years, she has been manager of culinary services for Lunds and Byerly's, a chain of 23 upscale supermarkets in the upper Midwest. She directed the company's School of Culinary Arts, managed retail culinary services and oversaw publications, resource material and a Web site. Schipani was a restaurant critic and food writer for the 70,000-circulation Minnesota Monthly magazine from 1991-96. She wrote a food and wine column for Patuxent Publishing Co., a group of weekly newspapers in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., area, from 1981-88. She was a recipe developer for "Prevention's Quick and Healthy Low Fat Cooking: Featuring All American Food" (Rodale Press, 1995) and was the editor, test kitchen manager and food writer for The Byerly Bag, a supermarket publication, from 1997 to 2006. From 1982-86, she owned and operated a full-service catering business in the Baltimore-Washington area. Schipani received a diploma, with honors, in classical French cooking from the L'Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, Md., in 1982. She has a bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry from Rosemont College in Pennsylvania and master's degree in education, magna cum laude, from Loyola College in Baltimore. She also took courses in restaurant management from Howard Community College in Maryland, attended the International Association of Culinary Professionals Master Class Program and has earned the highest level of certification, Certified Culinary Professional, from the IACP, demonstrating competency in food safety, nutrition, food science and world and U.S. cuisines. Read Columns

Now We're Cooking

Teresa Taylor Teresa Taylor is an assistant features editor for The Post and Courier who oversees the Food, Home & Garden and Petc. sections. Her first love and primary responsibility is the food beat, which she took over in 2003 after more than 20 years at the newspaper in other editing positions. She writes stories for Wednesday's Food section and a recipe exchange column for home cooks called "Now We're Cooking," which appears in Sunday editions. Taylor joined the company in 1983 as a copy editor for The News and Courier, having previously worked for Gannett's Westchester-Rockland newspaper group in White Plains, N.Y. She became weekend editor in 1987, news editor of The Evening Post in 1990, and executive business editor of The Post and Courier in 1991. Read Columns

Movies

Bill Thompson Born in Asheboro, N.C., Bill Thompson is a graduate of the Universiy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has worked as a feature writer, book review editor, film critic and columnist for The Post and Courier since 1980. A former sports writer in Virginia and in Florida, he also contributes articles on science and travel. Read Columns

Poetry

Marjory Wentworth Marjory Wentworth, of Sullivan's Island, is South Carolina's poet laureate. Her poetry column for The Post and Courier began in 2006. Read Columns