Jane Sweetland

Jane hikes and bikes and skis and travels and reads and makes up stories about things that never happened for her grandchildren and diligently researches things that did happen for her books. Like a forager on a field of wildflowers, she has collected advanced degrees every decade since her twenties, giving hope to countless much younger students that their brains need not atrophy even if (especially if) much energy is tapped by life and love and the pursuit of small children and sanity, perhaps, in a world that seems sometimes a little off kilter. With a bachelor's degree in American Studies, three teaching credentials (multiple, history, and English) two masters degrees (counseling and writing) she can speak with no more authority, really, than anyone else who has read well and deeply, but she did work to have the coin of the realm that allowed her to be a dean and an associate vice president at California State University Channel Islands. Prior to her tenure as a university administrator she taught hundreds of middle and high school students something about the English language and world history, and when she thinks about all those students, well into their adulthood now, she mostly hopes that they learned to be curious and to doubt and to dig for the truth, and to stay always true to themselves and the values for which they stand. She hopes they find, like she did, stories to tell, some of them in truth and some in pursuit of leaving the planet and their progeny in good hands.