I’ve been a published author for more than half a century, if you count my first paragraph-long masterpieces in "Aunt Elsie's Page," a children’s feature in the now-defunct Oakland Tribune. I took a forty year break to recover from the stressful experience of early fame, taking up writing again in 1999, when I began writing for Lucent Books, which specializes in non-fiction books for young adult readers, primarily for acquisition by school and public libraries. I wrote for them for about four years, and though I think the total number of books was close to twenty, even on a good day, I can remember maybe half of the titles. Writing for Lucent was a great experience. I wrote mostly about countries, so I often traveled to get information first hand, and back home in my jammies with piles of books around me, I learned more about the world than in all my years of schooling. I’ve had a lot of that too, and in fact I never really left college. I got a BA in English from the University of California at Davis in 1972, followed by an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago, and a return to Davis for my Ph.D., which I completed in 1982. I was an adjunct faculty member and an administrator of academic support programs at San Diego State University and the University of California at San Diego. I came to San Diego City College in 1990 (where I still am today), first as a dean and then as a full-time professor of English and Humanities. Recently I made my first foray into writing trade books for general audiences, with Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance (St. Martin’s Press, May 2008), which I wrote with the help of many years of research by Michael Bart. My experiences writing this book will serve as the foundation for my comments at the Backspace Conference, but I also have a novel, The Four Seasons, coming out from Voice in November 2008. Visit Laurel's website at www.laurelcorona.com .
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