After getting a BA in theater from San Francisco State University, Denise Larson pinned her dreams on becoming an experimental theater artist in the 1970s milieu of the Bay Area. Along that path she founded Les Nickelettes. For thirteen years, she helmed the feminist theater company and assumed the role of actress, playwright, producer, stage director, and administrative/artistic director. Then she gave it all up to become a mother and teacher. After a twenty-year career in Early Childhood Education, she retired and took up writing.