Hi! Welcome to my website --
thanks for visiting!
Check out my blog and see what I've been up to!
And be sure to check out upcoming events -- I'd love to see you there.
I'd love to hear from you!
Write me at Lresau@hotmail.com.
[Please use the subject "Reader Mail" so I know it's not spam].
I read and respond to letters about once a week, so you might have to wait a few days before hearing back from me. But I will write back!
I love to write books for teens and kids, drawing on my experiences as a cultural anthropologist and ESL teacher in Mexico and the U.S. My most recent novel, Red Glass (ages 10 & up), has been receiving starred reviews and awards -- including the IRA Young Adult Fiction Award and the Américas Award. Check out the latest good news.
My first novel, What the Moon Saw (ages 10 & up), also mainly set in rural Oaxaca, Mexico, has also been receiving awards and starred reviews!
Right now I have a few projects going on. I'm revising one teen novel tentatively entitled The Indigo Notebook, set in Ecuador. It should be released around Fall 2009. I'm also revising a middle grade (ages 7-11) novel called Star in the Forest, which should come out around Spring 2010. When I find the time, I'm also revising a memoir co-written with a wonderful Quichua woman from the Ecuadorian Andes. (Luckily, this revision thing is growing on me!)
I teach ESL (English as a Second Language) at a community college in Fort Collins, Colorado, where I live with my husband, our baby, and our dog. I'm donating five percent of my book royalties to indigenous rights organizations (this year, to the Binational Center for the Development of Indigenous Oaxacan Communities. I've also donated to the Xucaneb Fund [PDF], which awards scholarships to young Guatemalans in the Mayan village of Xucaneb so that they can afford to study past sixth grade and earn the valuable ninth grade graduation certificate.