Submit a tip
Do you have info to share with HuffPost reporters? Here’s how.
Dr. Cindy Lovell is the former executive director of both the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut and the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum in Hannibal, Missouri. She holds a B.A. and M.A. from Stetson University and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. She has held tenured faculty positions at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida and Quincy University in Quincy, Illinois. She founded and directed the HATS (High Achieving Talented Students) Program at Stetson. She currently oversees Special Projects for the Mark Twain House. A consummate hooky player who fell in love with Tom Sawyer in the fourth grade, Lovell later dropped out of high school. She has published two children's novels, Rachel Mason Hears the Sound and Not This Sunday and has authored dozens of articles, textbook chapters, and essays. She has taught numerous writing workshops, founded and directed the Mark Twain Young Authors workshops, was a contributing editor for the Mensa Research Journal, and co-directed the Mark Twain Teacher Workshops at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum. She has presented keynote addresses and educator workshops at various conferences and presented at Big Read events for communities reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Lovell co-authored Down the Mississippi with CNN iReporter Neal Moore. In 2011, she wrote and co-produced with Grammy Award-winner Carl Jackson Mark Twain: Words & Music, a double-CD telling Twain's life in spoken word and song, featuring Jimmy Buffett, Garrison Keillor, Clint Eastwood, Emmylou Harris, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Rhonda Vincent, Bradley Walker, Carl Jackson, The Church Sisters, Angela Lovell, Sheryl Crow, Brad Paisley, Marty Raybon, Val Storey, Vince Gill, Joe Diffie, and Ricky Skaggs. In 2015, Lovell wrote the narrative for Orthophonic Joy: The 1927 Bristol Sessions Revisited, a double-CD benefit for the Birthplace of Country Music Museum. The CD features Eddie Stubbs as narrator; singers include Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, Emmylou Harris, Marty Stuart, Dolly Parton, Ashley Monroe, The Shotgun Rubies, Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, Vince, Keb' Mo', The Church Sisters, Corbin Hayslett, Brad Paisley, Carl Jackson, Ashley & Shannon Campbell, Sheryl Crow, Larry Cordle and the Virginia Luthiers, Jesse McReynolds, and The Chuck Wagon Gang. Lovell has been a contributor to The Huffington Post since 2010.