Author Event: Shayna

Among my earliest memories is the Sumner Branch Library in Minneapolis.  Every week, my mother, older brother, Paul, and I walked for what seemed a long time to the library.  From the noisy street we entered through massive wooden doors into a castle like building, which now I know was part of the Carnegie library system. Light streamed through the huge paned windows and reflected off the shiny oak floors. We tiptoed to the children’s wing where my mother let us pick as many books as we could carry home with us.

The world called to me and I’ve been fortunate to travel often and to many places. My teaching degree in English from the University of Minnesota became a ticket to work in a variety of settings including the American International School in Israel and Los Angeles’s inner city.  I earned a Master’s in Educational Psychology and then acquired a Marriage and Family Therapy License. Those degrees morphed into a career in the Northwest as a lecturer in education, substance abuse and mental health. 

Wherever I traveled I remained fascinated by the written word – as a reader, story teller and writer. For years I’ve written short stories and filed them away. I thought I would eventually pull them together into a book of short stories, but instead a new story emerged, that became the novel, Turtle Season.  Through Anna Simon I explored a constant preoccupation in my life – how do we as humans manage the inevitable and often very surprising events that change our lives? How do we rediscover or maybe recreate ourselves?  What keeps us resilient through the often treacherous journey?

My second novel, Shayna, continues to explore the same questions and although the journey is far more treacherous, the young protagonist, Shayna Rifkin Edelman, movingly illustrates the strength of the human spirit and the power of resilience. 

I live with my partner in Tucson, Arizona in the winter season and in Minneapolis, Minnesota during the summers.