About

Author Liza Kleinman

I think my earliest career ambition was to be someone who flew. Not a pilot, just someone who flew. Or maybe that was more of my brother’s ambition for me; he’s the one who tied a kite to me when I was three. We spent the summer running up and down the driveway, trying to launch me, but it never quite came off how we planned.

A few years later I decided to be a writer, and I’ve more or less stuck with that. I wrote fiction throughout my childhood on Long Island, New York, and kept at it when I went to Wesleyan University in Connecticut. It was after graduation, when I was living in New York City, that I stumbled into a job writing for a publisher of educational materials. I was getting paid to write fiction and nonfiction reading passages, and questions to accompany them. And I was close enough to Rockefeller Center to go watch the ice skaters at lunchtime. I couldn’t believe my luck!

Still, I wanted to get back to writing fiction, so after a while I headed out to Indiana University to get an MFA in fiction writing. I loved my time in Bloomington, Indiana, and the people I met there. I published a few short stories, and stayed there an extra year writing for a nonprofit organization that was creating an online elementary school curriculum.

My next stop was Portland, Maine, where I’ve lived ever since. I work as a freelance writer, mostly doing language arts educational materials. I also write fiction, and am delighted to be publishing my first novel, Azalea, Unschooled. My husband and daughter and I love living in Maine, where we ice skate and fly kites and tell each other lots of stories.