Laura CastoroLaura is a successful author with more than 34 books in publication. She has written in several genres, including westerns, nonfiction, mainstream fiction and historical and contemporary romance. Her publishers have included Warner, Pocketbooks, Avon Simon and Schuster (Jan Messner), Dell (under three different imprints), Harlequin, Silhouette, Kensington and Berkley. Some recent work includes A New Lu (March 2005/Red Dress Ink), Mischief (May 2002/Kensington), Crossing the Line (August 2002/ Berkley) - a mainstream novel about contemporary African-American life - and Notorious (February 2003/Kensington). Everybody Loves Ramon (MightyWords May 2000) was her first venture into e-publishing. It was nominated for a "Readers' Choice Award" and the "Frankfurt Book Award" for e-publishing. Other recent books include The Gamble (1998) and Tempest (1997/Kensington), Found: One Marriage (August 1996/ Silhouette Intimate Moments) and My Own True Love for Walmart Books (July 1996). Her works sell internationally. She is published in Italian, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Czech, Japanese and Chinese. English-language editions are published in Great Britain, Canada and Australia. She has also been selected twice for the Doubleday Book Club. Laura is active in literary and commercial activities, having served as a member of the board of the Texas Writers Association, and was twice chairperson and a founding member of the Greater Dallas Writer's Association. She has taught creative writing to adult education classes at the University of North Texas Cont. Ed, the Collin County Community College (Texas) as well as one-day commercial fiction and marketing workshops for the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Texas at Midland/Odessa and the University of Houston among others. She has spoken as a guest or featured speaker at numerous conferences and workshops-including the UTD/GDWA "Craft of Writing," the University of Houston Writer's Conference, the Northern Louisiana Romance Writers Conference (Shreveport LA), the International Women's Writing Guild (Saratoga, NY), First Coast Writers' Festival, keynote at New York RWW, as well as being a breakfast speaker at the 1997 Black Caucus of the American Library Association. In addition, she has spoken often at Romance Writers of America's annual conferences and Romantic Times conferences all over the United States. Her awards include selection twice as a "Literary Lion" by the Southwestern Bookseller's Association, and several "Reviewers Choice" awards from Romantic Times. She has twice been a finalist for RWA national awards, and was given the Key to the City of her hometown. Her February 1995 release, Impetuous, won the New Jersey Writers Golden Leaf Award for best historical romance of 1995. Tiger in the Rain won the 1995 national Readers Choice Award for best among long contemporary romance. She has been recently nominated by Romantic Times for a Lifetime Achievement Award for Innovative Writing. For the past 10 years Laura has sponsored the Rose Trilogy award for novels at the Craft of Writing Conference. Five of her eight winners have gone on to sell their work to national publishers. Two of those have been made into films. The Denise Marcil Literary Agency has represented her for 22 years. Her educational background includes graduating valedictorian of her high school, two years of study at Howard University where she was on full academic scholarship. Additional undergraduate study was done at the University of Texas at Kingsville where she studied toward a degree in microbiology. Born in Ft. Worth, Texas, Laura grew up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and lived for many years with her husband and three children in the Dallas, Texas, area. Recently, she moved back to her hometown. She enjoys reading, traveling (she's been to Australia, several European countries, Canada and Mexico), theater, movies and listening to R&B and classical music. Read More Read Less