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Larry Woods - Biography

Larry Woods advises and prepares leaders and executives for television appearances and interviews. Larry coached Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen in his television debates in 1994, 2002 and 2006. Bredesen's campaign manager stated that Larry Woods' coaching was the turning point in winning the 2002 campaign. Larry served as a senior strategist for the Bredesen Transition Team and as chair of Governor Bredesen's TennCare Transition committee and as Co-Chair of the Transportation Committee. He frequently appears on radio and television as a spokesperson for progressive and liberal causes. Larry Woods is widely known as a “Yellow Dog Democrat.”

Larry won many national awards in college debate and as a result he is the chair of the Pelham Memorial Foundation and advises the National Urban Debate Association, the national organization providing grants to encourage participation of young women and minorities in high school debate. He is committed to helping young people with debate and has coached at Pearl-Cohn, Martin Luther King, Hume Fogg and Overton High Schools in Nashville, Tennessee. In eight years, he coached four high school debate teams to the National Forensics League National Tournament (eight students, six of whom were young women or minorities) and had more than 150 students in the program.

In his real life, Woods is a senior partner at Woods & Woods Law firm and is a professor teaching pre-law courses at Tennessee State University. He was voted the Tennessee State University Teacher of the Year, 1997-1998. He was also voted Best Lawyer in Nashville in the Nashville Scene poll (1993). He has received numerous other honors including Outstanding Defense Lawyer Award, 1998; Special Award of Merit, National Association of Defense Lawyers, 1978; past president, Federal Bar Association of Nashville and Middle Tennessee; delegate, Tennessee Bar Association House of Delegates 1976-1982; Board of Editors, The Federal Lawyer, 1995-1996; local counsel, N.A.A.C.P.; general counsel, Tennessee State Employees Association; general counsel, National Baptist Publishing Board, and Tennessee Legal Services Advisory Commission, 1976-1984. He is the author of seven books and law articles on trial practice, civil rights, constitutional law and sex harassment cases. Larry Woods is a frequent speaker at conventions concerning sex harassment laws and civil rights cases.

Larry Woods is a lover of books. His obsession with books began as a boy when his mother took him on his first visit to the downtown Nashville Library. He discovered books that enabled him to travel anywhere through time and he was hooked. He began his serious collection first with Edgar Rice Burroughs and his Tarzan series and then moved on to collect all kinds of books. His personal collection now numbers more than 100,000 books, not including the books for sale at BookMan/BookWoman Used Books. When BookMan/BookWoman first opened, Larry's wife, Saralee, said the slogan of their store was “selling my husband's books.” Larry teaches classes about collecting books and identifying first editions. Larry is a book reviewer for several newspapers and for television.

http://www.bookmanbookwoman.com

Larry Woods will be speaking on Saturday, July 17 at 3:00 pm, as part of the Tennessee Antiquarian Book Fair on Book Collecting 101 at the Cowan Center for the Arts.

$5.00 general admission ticket will allow access to both the book fair and all speakers at Cowan Center for the Arts.