My grandmother was a great cook. When we would visit her in South Carolina, we spent hours on her porch enjoying wonderful meals accompanied by vats of iced tea. Now, my memories of her and those meals are captured in her Junior League cookbook that was passed on to me, complete with notes in her handwriting and spills on the pages of her favorite recipes.

These meals inspired a great love of cooking for my mother and for me. Over the years, I’ve gathered quite a few cookbooks. To me, cookbooks are great souvenirs, either a remembrance of a person or an especially wonderful trip or location. They are fun to read and offer great inspiration, even if I never actually try any of the recipes from them.

I also purchase cookbooks from chefs I most admire—Sara Foster, Ina Garten, Patricia Wells, Alice Waters, Ruth Reichl. Now, Sara Moulton’s most recent cookbook, Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners, graces the shelves. Do you know Sara Moulton? She was the Executive Chef at Gourmet Magazine for twenty-three years, has had several cooking shows on Food Network, and just published her third cookbook. Sara was in Raleigh, NC, doing a book signing at Quail Ridge Books. To me, she’s a rock star in the world of chefs and cookbook authors. It was exciting to see so many people come to hear her speak and stand in line to have her sign their cookbooks.

We’re all fans of SAS authors and their books. SAS Authors are rock stars in the SAS User community. SAS user group conferences, like SAS Global Forum, are the perfect venues to see this in action. Our staff gets an opportunity to view the draw of our own authors as SAS users visit the SAS Publishing booth, looking for the next books published by their favorite authors, bringing colleagues in to show them, and looking for the authors, themselves, so that they can collect autographs and signed copies of SAS books.

So, who are your favorite rock stars of the SAS Author community? Which SAS authors do you most admire and why? How has their work affected your use of SAS or JMP? Which authors would you most like to see presenting at a conference or through a webinar and what topic would you like them to address?

As we look forward to the upcoming regional user group meetings and SAS Talks webinars for this year, we’re anticipating participation by many SAS authors. We’re booking engagements, now, so let us hear from you!