TERA LEIGH
Occupation: Designer and Author Website: Tera Leigh Biography: Tera Leigh is the author of The Complete Book of Decorative Painting (North Light Books). She is spokesperson (and co-developer) of the Paintability line of painting products, and the Robert Simmons Sapphire brush line. She also writes columns for four painting magazines, and has had her designs published in many craft and home decor magazines. What do you do and how did you start? My first book, The Complete Book of Decorative Painting, was released in October 2001. I currently write columns for PaintWorks and Decorative Artist's Workbook, and will be adding columns in Quick and Easy Painting and Tole World magazines. I also freelance for many other magazines. I committed myself to becoming an artist in 1999. My first creative goals were to create a product line and write a reference book to make it easier for people to learn how to paint. I have a real passion for creativity and I want to create products that encourage people to use and explore their own...
RUBY BAYAN
Occupation: Writer Website: Our Simple Joys Biography: I define myself as a lover of life. I celebrate life by learning and appreciating something new everyday so that I can inspire and motivate -- push the body, feed the soul, live the moment, and appreciate the simple joys in life. I blend and channel all of these into my writing, my crafts, and other creative media I dabble in, like Web sites, charcoal portraits, and graphic designs. Freelance writing has been my focus these past six years, bylined in print and online. How old were you when you realised you wanted to do what you're currently doing and how old were you when you actually began. I had been a diligent writer since I was in high school -- when the surge of hormones found release in diaries and poems and letters to best friends. I "spread my wings" a bit in my mid-twenties when I wrote an inspirational column for a company newsletter. At that time writing inspirational columns for real, or for pay,...
PAMELA MUELLER
Occupation: Author Website: Kiska Lore Biography: My beloved cat, Kiska, and I have written three children's books: The Kiska Trilogy. Our books are entitled "The Bumpedy Road," "Rain City Cats," and "Eight Paws to Georgia." I was raised in southern Oregon and attended Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, where I received my B.A. in Spanish. After graduation, I worked for two years as a flight attendant for Pan American World Airlines. Then I married and moved to Mexico City, Mexico, where I lived for the next seventeen years. During my years in Mexico, I raised two lovely daughters, worked occasionally as a model, an actress and an English teacher. Then came the divorce and the difficult transition to a new life back in the U.S.A. (see "The Bumpedy Road") The girls were eleven and fourteen years old, so San Diego, California was indeed a new world for them. I obtained employment with the United States Customs Service, where I met my second husband, Michael Mueller. After both girls had graduated from college,...
LAURIE WAGNER
Occupation: Word Wrangler Website: Word Wrangler Biography: I'm a non-fiction writer and a teacher of writing living in Alameda California. What do you do and how did you start? As a writer and a teacher I get to be all over the map, and my working life goes through a lot of phases and changes. For the last three years I have been teaching a personal essay writing class withWriters.com, and I teach wild writing class here at home as well as coaching writers on their book and essay projects. I also teach yoga/writing workshops with a friend. And I write, that's the idea, to balance the stable teaching work with the more precarious writing world where you can't depend on books and essays getting sold in a timely manner. Sometimes I get a call to write a quick and dirty gift book for a publisher, sometimes I come up with my own books. I have written five, all for Chronicle Books. The most well known are Living Happily Ever After: Couples Talk about...
KERI SMITH
Occupation: Artist and Writer Website: Keri Smith Biography: Keri Smith is an award winning illustrator and writer living in Canada. She has a wide following of clients in North America, Europe, and Japan. Most recently Forbes, The Boston Globe, Better Homes and Gardens, Ford Motor Co,, The Body Shop, The Washington Post, Teen People Magazine, Yahoo, Bon-Appetit, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Canadian Airlines, Utne Reader, and The Canadian Opera Company. She currently resides in a "magic cottage" outside of Toronto, painting, illustrating, creating, writing, reading, and living out loud. What do you do and how did you start? How old were you when you realised you wanted to do what you're currently doing and how old were you when you actually began. What jobs did you have before you went out on your own? I think I knew what I wanted to do when I was nine years old. We were reading a book called "Jacob Two-two Meets the Hooded fang" by Mordecai Richler, illustrated by Fritz Wegner. I loved the illustrations and...