Author Biography for Lisa Ray Turner

Lisa Ray Turner started her writing career at eight, when she became intrigued by boarding schools and began writing stories about them. (It’s unclear why, since there were no ivy-walled boarding schools in Boise, Idaho where she grew up.)

Many years later, Lisa found renewed inspiration for writing when her second son was born and contracted meningitis. Lisa kept a journal where she chronicled the roller coaster ride of the neonatal intensive care unit. A month later, the baby came home. His homecoming was joyful, but he had many medical needs. Lisa quit her part-time job as a music teacher to take care of him. She continued to write, squeezing in time during her young sons’ naps, and discovered that she still loved it.

Her essays eventually found their way to magazines. She’s been published in many, including Woman’s World, Woman’s Day, Parents, Catholic Digest, Family Times, the Chicken Soup series, Home Life, Christian Parenting Today, Weight Watchers, the Ensign, American Baby and Family Fun. She’s also received several awards for her nonfiction writing.

Lisa’s first novel, Pray Away Pounds (Hatrack River) was published in 1993. Mom’s Search for Sanity (Granite Publishing), a book of essays about parenting, followed (co-authored with Tom Bollard, then two more novels, The Twelve Disasters of Christmas (Bookcraft) and The Maybe Saint (Granite). She’s also written six books that she can’t read – a series of easy-reader novels for foreign language students. She writes them in English and they’re translated into Spanish, French and German.

Though Lisa discovered her writing career by serendipity, she found that her educational background prepared her well for the writing world. She got her bachelors degree in education from Brigham Young University and her masters degree in music from The University of Michigan. Studying music and being a musician taught her to observe the world, relish creativity, and to persevere. She also learned that sending a manuscript out was easy, compared to standing before a panel of judges and singing arias.

Lisa lives in the suburbs of Denver – complete with minivan and dog - with her husband, Robert, and their three sons, Devon, Ethan, and Bryce. She’s lived in Colorado for thirteen years and always wondered what happened inside the Denver Mint. She found out by writing The Denver Mint: 100 Years of Gangsters, Gold and Ghosts.