
Something people often don’t know when they first meet Laura is that she has an eye disease called macular degeneration — diagnosed when she was fourteen — and as a result, is legally blind. That means basically that she can’t drive, can’t read regular print, and tends to avoid crowds because she can’t see faces real well. For a long time, Laura struggled with the fact that she wasn’t ‘normal’–that is until she realized, no one’s normal!
She used this experience to write her debut novel BLIND SPOT.
Laura earned a MA in Children’s Literature from Eastern Michigan University and is a former Language Arts teacher and special education aide for middle and high school students. She writes full-time now, but runs a monthly Creative Writing Club for fifth through eighth graders at her children’s school and never passes up an opportunity to talk about or help children with writing.
Photo by Vania Stoyanova, VLC Productions