Jan Stites
AUTHOR

Jan Stites

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When Jan was in seventh grade, she had an English teacher—Mrs. Lee—who reminded her of a Komodo dragon: big and snarling. Mrs. Lee hated her. Or so Jan felt. When she entered that room, she kept her eyes on the floor and all but held her breath for fifty minutes. Then Mrs. Lee assigned students their first writing topic, and Jan wrote about her brother, Ron, and the gentleness with which he once rescued baby possums from a mother who wasn’t just playing dead. Mrs. Lee praised it effusively. Jan’s first A+. If writing could make a friend of a Komodo dragon, who knew what other miracles it might inspire? She was hooked.
Jan’s path to novel writing began with her love of books and movies, which led to screenwriting. She optioned multiple projects and taught screenwriting classes at San Francisco State University and the University of California-Berkeley for several years before deciding, somewhat belatedly, that screenplays are written to be seen, whereas she wanted to write something to be read.
From the film world, Jan took to novel writing a strong sense of scene and dialogue. Wally Lamb blurbed her first novel, Edgewise. Lake Union published her second, Reading the Sweet Oak. This October, Mumblers Press will bring out her new book, Becoming Felicity. Jan’s currently working on her next novel, whose elderly ballsy narrator happens to be dead.
Jan lives with her husband in Northern California.
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