Judy Alter

\nJudy Alter majored in English in college because she loved to read and besides, some man was going to marry and take care of her. No career needed. Things didn’t quite work out that way—after earning a Ph.D. and surviving a failed marriage, she wrote fiction. To her surprise, her first novel was marketed to a young-adult audience and she found herself pigeon-holed as a young-adult author. Graduate school had sparked an interest in the history of the nineteenth-century American West. With a strong career and several awards as a western writer with fiction and nonfiction, for both adults and young readers, she longed to write mysteries, didn’t think she could do it.\n\tToday, retired as director of a small academic, she has made mystery writing her new career. She is the author the Kelly O’Connell Mysteries, the Blue Plate Café Mysteries, and the stand-alone The Perfect Coed. Daily she blogs, writing Judy’s Stew. A member of Sisters in Crime and the Guppy chapter, she is the proud single parent of four and the grandmother of seven.\n\t“Writing,” she says, “has been the anchor in a good life. I am a mom, grandmom, and a writer, in that order. I love it.”\n