Lauren Kessler

Lauren Kessler is the author of six works of narrative nonfiction, including her newest (summer 2010), My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, A Daughter, A Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence. She is also the author of Pacific Northwest Book Award winner Dancing with Rose (published in paperback as Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer’s), Washington Post bestseller Clever Girl and Los Angeles Times bestseller The Happy Bottom Riding Club – which David Letterman, in fierce competition with Oprah, chose as the first (and only) book for the Dave Letterman Book Club. Kessler appeared twice on his late-night show. She is also the author of Oregon Book Award winner Stubborn Twig, which was chosen as the book for all Oregon to read in honor of the state’s 2009 sesquicentennial.

Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, O magazine, Utne Reader, The Nation, newsweek.com and salon.com. She is a national speaker and workshop leader. The founder and editor of Etude, the online magazine of narrative nonfiction, she directs the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with her writer husband, Tom Hager, her three brilliant and faultless children and a cat that thinks it’s a dog.