Shari Stauch

A touring professional pool player for 20 years (retired 2004) Shari Stauch launched Pool & Billiard Magazine with Harold Simonsen in 1983. She was honored by the Women's Professional Billiard Association (WPBA) as the 1995 Sportsperson of the Year; is a five-time WPBA President's Award recipient, and in 2007 was inducted into the prestigious Women's Pro Billiard Tour Hall of Fame.

Her involvement in pool included 8 years as WPBA secretary, 2 as treasurer; 6 years as a BCA board member, heading the BCA's Long Range Planning Committee; 2 years as founding president of the Billiard Education Foundation (BEF); 3 years as Secretary General of the World Pool-Billiard Association; and 2 years as North American PR Director for the World Confederation of Billiard Sports, that achieved recognition of billiards as an official Olympic sport and promoted the first-ever billiards competition in the World Games (Akita, Japan 2001). In addition, Stauch was instrumental in the launch of the WPBA's highly successful ESPN televised Classic Billiard Tour. Her involvement included the tour's first TV negotiations, launching a PR division, and sponsor development, including sales of all industry sponsors and the tour's first-ever non-industry sponsorships.

Shari appeared in and was a special consultant, with screen credits, to the production of the major motion picture The Color of Money (1987) directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise.

Stauch is the author of four books, Precision Pool 1st and 2nd editions, and Pool Player's Edge (Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL c. 1998, 2003, 2007), both written with fellow pro player Gerry "The Ghost" Kanov. A second edition of the Pool Player's Edge in a new size and in full color will release in November, 2010. She was also featured as a mentor in the book, You Can Do It, written by United Flight 93 heroine Laura Catuzzi Grandcolas. (Shari's section is entitled, "Beat the Boys at Pool."

Shari's company, Shark Marketing Co., works with authors and aspiring authors to expand their audiences, and co-produces the annual Words & Music literary festival in New Orleans. She resides with her family in Charleston, South Carolina where she also heads up the Women's Writers Forum for Charleston's Center for Women.