As a lover of written words and the authors who wrote them, Antoinette taught 5th grade through high school. A toxic injury in 1991 led her out of the classroom and into a bookstore – where she went in short order from bookseller to event planner and developed a reputation among authors that soon led to her becoming a literary publicist. Seeing the changes coming in the publishing industry, she added book developer to her resume and soon thereafter founded the La Jolla Writers Conference. Now in its nineteenth year, the conference has been called by Writer’s Digest one of the 84 conferences in the country worth the money. Simultaneously, she also hosted Writers Roundtable radio show for eight years, was the Book Lady on KUSI-TV Good Morning San Diego for 20 years, and created Nightstand Press.