aka Becky Stuart Stuart Buchan was a Canadian citizen, born in Sydney, Australia in 1942 and raised in Singapore, Scotland, and Vancouver, British Columbia. He died in 1987 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts of AIDS related pneumonia.

Arlene Erlbach is the author of more than forty books for young people—both fiction and non fiction. Her first book and first try at writing Does Your Nose Get in The Way, Too? won a Romance Writers of America Award for best Young Adult novel of the year. Her interviews and advice books The Best Friends Book, The Families Book, are recipients of Parent’s Choice awards. “Voice of Youth Advocates” called her Best Friends Book, the ultimate book on friendship. Her Middle School Survival Guide has sold over fifteen thousand copies since Fall of 2003. A Booklist review described it as strong and much needed advice for middle schoolers. The Kids’ Business Book, The Kids’ Volunteering and The Kids’ Invention Book, which are interview / how to books are notable books in social studies. Both The Kids’ Invention Book and the Kids’ Business Book have been book club editions. The Kids’ Invention Book is excerpted in Harcourt Brace’s collection series, which is the bestselling basal series in the United States. Thanksgiving Day Crafts has received the CHILDREN'S CHOICES FOR 2006 award. Arlene is a careful observer of the school scene. She has been an elementary school teacher for 17 years and is currently working on a second masters degree in education. She was the teen advice columnist for CompuServe’s Wow! and is a frequent speaker at schools. Series contributed to: . Crosswinds

Prize-winning novelist and short story writer who has published seven novels—among them King Of The World, which won the Pushcart Press Editor's Book Award for an "important and unusual book of literary distinction," and The Kingdom of Brooklyn, winner of the Ribalow Award from Hadassah Magazine for "the best English-language book of fiction on a Jewish theme" — as well as five volumes of short stories, nine young adult novels, and three books of non-fiction. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Mademoiselle, Redbook and many other magazines, as well as in literary journals such as The Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southwest Review, Shenandoah, The Chattahoochee Review and The Virginia Quarterly Review. She has published essays in The American Scholar, Commentary, The Sewanee Review, Salmagundi and The Writer. She earned her M.A. in English from Brandeis University and was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fiction Fellowship to Stanford University. She presently teaches fiction writing at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

The first thing you ought to know about me is that I go by the nickname, Jody (and, yes, apparently my parents did name me after the character of Jody in The Yearling). My Facts: Fast I grew up in a suburb of Washington, D.C., until I was thirteen years old, when my father accepted a position with the Ford Foundation and I moved to Nairobi, Kenya. My first novel, intended for young adults, drew on my great passion for Kenya. (No Regrets, Dial, 1982). After two years attending Loreto Convent, I went to the College du Leman boarding school in Geneva, Switzerland. I graduated from Mt. Holyoke College, then received my Master’s degree from Bryn Mawr College, both in the field of English Literature. During graduate school, I married and had two children, Rachel and Daniel. After many years, the marriage ended in a spirit of friendship, and I made my new home in Washington, D.C. My parents, sister and brother live close by with their respective families. My daughter, Rachel, is a second year graduate student at Harvard, and my son, Daniel, is a junior at Yale. My Philosophy: Fast I truly consider myself a reader, first, and then a writer. Though, yes, it’s true that my career is as a fiction writer. Still, because reading is my first love (and we all know how powerful a first love can be!), I write to be read and my goal is to make the reading experience both pleasurable and shocking. That’s why I try to write funny. Laughing titillates and teaches, without a person really knowing that they’re being manipulated. My goal: to make you laugh and, thus, to manipulate you into seeing your world and your self with new eyes.