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Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff | |
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| Born | Elizabeth Koehler 1957 |
| Occupation | Author, instructor |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse | Robert Pentacoff |
Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff (born 1957) is an American author. She has written both fiction and nonfiction, as well as children's literature and adult books. Her memoir, The Missing Kennedy: Rosemary Kennedy and the Secret Bonds of Four Women (2015) is about her experience with President Kennedy's sister and the author's aunt, Sister Paulus, Rosemary's caregiver and friend. The Missing Kennedy appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List for e-book non-fiction for the week of September 27, 2015. (https://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2015-09-27/e-book-nonfiction/list.html) She also wrote the instructional book, The ABCs of Writing for Children, which was a Writer's Digest Book Club selection.
Koehler-Pentacoff was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and grew up in nearby Oconomowoc. She moved to California as a teenager to attend college. She chose a double major in children's theater and liberal studies and graduated from California State University Fresno in 1979.
She married Robert Pentacoff in 1981, taught elementary and middle school and directed children's theater before turning to freelance writing for magazines and newspapers. When her son, Christopher, was young, she wrote stories for him, which led her to writing books for children.
When Koehler-Pentacoff began writing children's books, she also instructed adult teachers through California State University, East Bay. She taught weekend classes of creative drama and improvisation. Later she taught writing for children and writing comedy through UC Santa Cruz Extension located in Cupertino.
She has worked with the California Writers Club Mt. Diablo Branch's Young Writers Contest since 1995.
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Joan Didion was an American writer. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe. Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, California culture, and California history. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political and social rhetoric. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary entitled, The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.
John Gregory Dunne was an American writer. He began his career as a journalist for Time magazine before expanding into writing criticism, essays, novels, and screenplays. He often collaborated with his wife, Joan Didion.
Pagan Kennedy is an American columnist and author, and pioneer of the 1990s zine movement.
Tobias Jonathan Ansell Wolff is an American short story writer, memoirist, novelist, and teacher of creative writing. He is known for his memoirs, particularly This Boy's Life (1989) and In Pharaoh's Army (1994). He has written four short story collections and two novels including The Barracks Thief (1984), which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Wolff received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in September 2015.
Penny Warner is an American mystery writer who has won multiple Agatha Awards. She has also written more than 50 books on subjects ranging from cooking to parenting guides to party and activity books.
John Thacher Hurd is an American artist and the creator of children's picture books including Mama Don't Allow and Art Dog.
Terry Tempest Williams, is an American writer, educator, conservationist, and activist. Williams' writing is rooted in the American West and has been significantly influenced by the arid landscape of Utah. Her work focuses on social and environmental justice ranging from issues of ecology and the protection of public lands and wildness, to women's health, to exploring our relationship to culture and nature. She writes in the genre of creative nonfiction and the lyrical essay.
Janet Nichols Lynch is an American author of young adult fiction, fiction, and nonfiction. Lynch is also a pianist and an educator in music, English, and history.
Mark Abley is a Canadian poet, journalist, editor and nonfiction writer. Both his poetry and several nonfiction books express his interest in endangered languages. He has also published numerous magazine articles. In November 2022 Abley was awarded an honorary D. Litt. by the University of Saskatchewan for his writing career and for his services to Canadian literature.
Janet Kay Jensen is an American author. She was born April 3, 1951, in Berkeley, California. She earned the following degrees: B.S.Utah State University and M.A. Northwestern University. Jensen resides in northern Utah.
Lisa Dale Norton is an American author best known as a writer of literary nonfiction and creative nonfiction. She is the great-niece of Evelyn Maurine Norton Lincoln, U.S. President John F. Kennedy's personal secretary. Norton makes her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Carol Gorman is an American writer of children's fiction. She originally aspired to be an actress, and for a few years taught seventh grade at an Iowan middle school. Inspired by her husband and fellow author, Ed Gorman, she began writing in the mid-1980s. With over 22 books published under several names, Carol Gorman continues to write and teach.
"Stickeen: An Adventure with a Dog and a Glacier" (1897) is a short memoir by American naturalist John Muir. It is about a trip he took in Alaska (1880) with a dog named Stickeen and their outing together on a glacier. It is one of Muir's best-known writings, and is now considered a classic dog story.
Darcy S. Pattison is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction children’s literature, a blogger, writing teacher and indie publisher. Her books have been translated into nine languages. Although she is best known for her work in children’s literature, she is also a writing teacher traveling across the nation presenting her Novel Revision Retreat. She has been featured as a writer and writing teacher in prestigious publications such as Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies, and 2012 Writer's Market. Pattison is also an independent publisher of ebooks for adults in the educational market.
Beth Ann Fennelly is an American poet and prose writer and was the Poet Laureate of Mississippi.
Virginia "Ginger" Wadsworth is an American writer of biographies, Western American history, science, and natural history for young readers. She is the author of 30 award-winning books.
Lidia Yuknavitch is an American writer, teacher and editor based in Oregon. She is the author of the memoir The Chronology of Water, and the novels The Small Backs of Children,Dora: A Headcase, and The Book of Joan. She is also known for her TED talk "The Beauty of Being a Misfit", which has been viewed over 3.2 million times, and her follow-up book The Misfit's Manifesto.
Jane Kurtz is an American writer of more than thirty picture books, middle-grade novels, nonfiction, ready-to-reads, and books for educators. A member of the faculty of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in children's and adult literature, Kurtz is an international advocate for literacy and writing. She was also part of a small group of volunteers who organized the not-for-profit organization, Ethiopia Reads, which has established more than seventy libraries for children, published books, and built four schools in rural Ethiopia.
Kathleen Dean Moore is a philosopher, writer, and environmental activist from Oregon State University. Her early creative nonfiction writing focused on the cultural and spiritual values of the natural world, especially shorelines and islands. Her more recent work is about the moral issues of climate change.
Tonya K. Bolden is an American writer best known for her works of children's literature, especially children's nonfiction.
