Authors with an
Tama, Iowa is Craig McFarland Brown's childhood home. He grew up in
Iowa and lived here for much of his life. He writes books and
illustrates them using a technique called stippling. Stippling is using
dots to make the light and dark areas of a picture. Two of our favorite
books are In the Spring and Tractor. Now
Craig Brown
lives in Colorado, but many of his book ideas come from Iowa.
Cindy Gerard was born and raised in Iowa and still lives in northeast Iowa. She has published seven books with Bantam/Doubleday/Dell's romance line. She is now writing for other publishers. She has a new book coming out soon. She credits one of her teachers, Agnes Gough, for her passion for prose.
-- Information collected by D.J.
Mary Ann Gensicke grew up in Iowa and lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with her husband and children. After teaching elementary school for twenty years she became a library media specialist in the Cedar Rapids Community School District. She is at Monroe School in Cedar Rapids. Her travels to research her book, I Is for Iowa, gave her "a new appreciation of Iowa and its history." In 2001, Gensicke authored a second book I Is for Iowa People. She wrote about Iowans who have made an impact on the history of the state. Those that were still living were interviewed and others were the subject of research.
-- Original information collected by Caitlyn; editorial updates 2001
Carol Gorman writes books for young adult readers. She was born and raised in Iowa City and now lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She wrote Jennifer-the-Jerk Is Missing and many other books. She writes especially great mystery books. One her latest books is Dork in Disguise. Learn more about her by checking out Carol Gorman's web site.
Ed Gorman is an author who writes adult books. He lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with his wife, Carol Gorman. She writes for young readers. Ed Gorman writes mostly adult mystery and suspense novels. One of his newest books, Black River Falls, was published in England. It is about a boy's older brother who is a murderer.
Ed Gorman gets his ideas for writing books by reading books and stories. Ed will read a line or meet a character and suddenly a story line will pop into his head. Ed likes getting up in the morning, having some coffee and going upstairs to his work office, and getting started on writing a story. For the past seven years he has been making a living by writing novels.
-- Information collected by Aaron
Lynn Hall was born on Nov. 9, 1937 and was raised in the Midwest. She was the middle of three daughters. She was an author of children's books since 1967. She was born in Lombard, Illinois and now lives in the country near Elkader, Iowa. One of the books that she wrote was Dagmar Schultz and the Powers of Darkness which takes place in the fictitious town of New Berlin, Iowa. Another book was Dagmar Schultz and the Angel Edna. That book is about a boy-crazy thirteen-year-old. Dagmar moves to a quiet Iowa community only to find herself a special project of a guardian angel with very old-fashioned morals.
-- Information collected by Caitlyn; photo by Jan Hall
Ann Irwin usually wrote books with Lee Hadley. They wrote their books using Hadley Irwin as a pseudonym. They wrote a dozen or more books together. Some of their books were: What About Grandma?, Moon and Me, The Lilith Summer, Kim/Kimi, and The Original Freddie Ackerman. The last book they wrote together was Sara-With-An-H. Ann Irwin was born in Peterson, Iowa and grew up on a farm. She lived in Lake View, Iowa. Ann Irwin used to teach elementary school and taught university graduate courses in English at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. Before Ann Irwin began writing books with Lee Hadley she wrote books using her own name. She wrote one book, with Bernice Reida, about Iowa and its history. That book was titled Hawkeye Adventure. After Lee Hadley died, Ann Irwin continued to write books. In 1996, Ann Irwin was working on a book about a boy who comes to Iowa on an orphan train. This boy ends up living with Jesse, the creator of the Delicious apple.
Annabelle Irwin died on September 13, 1998, in Des Moines, Iowa. She was 82. Her last book was finished but unpublished.-- Origin information collected by Michelle; updates in 1999 and 2000.
Jacqueline Briggs Martin was born in Maine where her parents had a dairy farm. In Iowa she doesn't live on a farm but lives in a small college town. She writes picture books about mice and horses and people and places. She has written many books including Grandmother Bryant's Pocket and the book, Snowflake Bentley whose illustrator won the 1999 Caldecott Award. Jacqueline Briggs Martin has her own website which you can visit.
Violet Olsen was born May 8, 1922 in Spencer, Iowa. Her parents were Peter and Johanna Larsen. Her childhood home was near Spencer, Iowa. One of her books was The Growing Season, an autobiographical account of her life. She began writing stories for magazines and later she started writing books for children. Two of her articles were published in Reader's Digest. Both articles were written about children and it made her feel very happy to realize that people in many places were reading her stories about children. Violet Olsen died in 1995.
-- Information collected by Ryan
Most of this information was researched and collected by fourth and fifth grade students in Miss Preston's (later Mrs. Moran's) class. We researched to locate published authors who had an Iowa connection. We knew of some because they had visited our school (Harrison Elementary in Cedar Rapids, Iowa) and you can get more information about them by going to Harrison's author page on our school site. To find other authors we had to search in reference books and write them letters to get information. The University of Iowa maintains a collection of materials about Iowa authors in the University's library. That collection, the Iowa Authors Collection in Special Collections has materials pertaining to Iowa Authors.
We have tried to update the information as we get new information.
If you have any information about Iowa authors that you would like to share with us you can e-mail us:
