Jennifer Lauck | |
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| Born | December 15, 1963 Reno, Nevada |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Education | Montana State University (BA) Pacific Lutheran University (MFA) |
| Notable works | Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found |
Jennifer Lauck (born December 15, 1963) is an American fiction and non-fiction author, essayist, speaker and writing instructor.
Lauck is the American author of four books including the New York Times best seller Blackbird . [1] Her writing has been published in the U.S. and around the world, translated into several languages. Much of her popularity began when she appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2000 and Winfrey held the book up to her audience saying, "This should have been a book of the month book. Read it now." [2] [3] Blackbird debuted on The New York Times Best Seller list in November 2000, [4] dropping off and then returning in January 2001. [5]
Born in Reno, Nevada, Lauck split her early childhood between the states of Nevada and California, with her adoptive family. After her mother died in 1971, Lauck remained with her adoptive father and brother until her father died in 1973. At that time, Lauck was separated from her adoptive brother and raised in Nevada and Washington state, adopted a second time by the paternal side of her adoptive family.
Lauck's adulthood was spent in Washington, Montana and Oregon where she studied journalism at Montana State University and then took a reporting job with the Montana Television Network. Lauck's journalism career took her to Spokane, Washington, where she worked for KXLY-TV, then Portland, Oregon, where she worked for KATU-TV as a news producer and special reports producer. Her reports, investigative journalism, appeared on CNN and the ABC Nightly News. She has been nominated for several Society of Journalists awards and won Best News Story of the year for her report on an abduction case in Washington State. [6]
Lauck discussed her reasons for writing her first and subsequent memoirs with Literary Mama, "...memoir writing was born from the realization that I wanted to have children. I knew I had to go through some deep self-examination before bringing forth a child and I knew traditional avenues of therapy would never give me the insights and relative self-mastery I needed to be a competent mother." [7] The international bestseller Blackbird detailed Lauck's memory of childhood and was followed by her next book, Still Waters, [8] that took her to her 30s and the birth of her first child. In Still Waters, Lauck describes her writing of her second book as attempt to understand the suicide death of her adoptive brother, whom she was separated from as a young girl. [9] She followed Still Waters with a collection of short stories titled Show Me the Way, [10] in which she took a closer look at her parenting of her two children. She also wrote and published essays for Literary Mama and anthology collections [11] on parenting.
Moved by the number of letters received in support for her writing, as well as the sharing of personal tragedies in those fan letters, Lauck felt ill-equipped to respond skillfully and turned to study of Tibetan Buddhism [12] under American masters Anne Klein, [13] Harvey Aronson, Joanna Macy, [14] and Lama Tsultrim Allione, [15] as well as Tibetan master Adzom Rinpoche. [16] While studying Buddhist theory and practicing meditation, Lauck turned her writing toward larger spiritual questions, [17] publishing several essays in Lion's Roar [18] and Buddha Dharma. [19]
In 2007, Lauck continued to explore her life further and discovered the impact of her adoption [20] through studies with adoption experts Nancy Verrier, author of The Primal Wound, and Coming Home to Self, and Betty Jean Lifton, author of several books on the topic of adoption. [21] After hiring an investigator, Lauck found her original birth family and reunited with them in 2008. [22] Seal Press released her fourth memoir, titled Found: A Memoir & True Sequel to Blackbird, [23] focused on the impact of adoption and Lauck's reunion with her birth family.
Lauck has a BA in journalism from Montana State University and MFA in creative writing from Pacific Lutheran University and has taught writing for 12 years, most recently for The Attic Institute, as a Senior Fellow. [24] [25] Lauck travels to speak on a variety of topics including motherhood, empowerment of women, writing, adoption, foster care, abandonment, early loss, Tibetan Buddhism, and mediation. [26]
A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of gestational surrogacy.
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Blackbird is a memoir by the American journalist and author Jennifer Lauck. Published in October 2000, Blackbird became a New York Times bestseller and was translated into twenty-two languages, making the bestseller lists in London, Ireland and Spain. In this memoir, Lauck conveys the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions of a frightened child in her account of the six years during which both of her parents died. Lauck was given the Book Sense 76 award and was featured in Newsweek, Harper's Bazaar, Talk, People, Glamour and Writer's Digest. She was a select USA Today pick and nominated for two Oregon Book Awards.
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