About Ona Russell
I hold an M.A. in English from Clark University and a PhD in literature from the University of California, San Diego. Teaching for years in various colleges and universities, I developed courses that combined my interdisciplinary interests: from "Poetry and the Workplace" to the "Truth of Historical Fiction" to "Literature and the Law," a topic on which I also write and speak extensively.Becoming a novelist was, however, less deliberate—one might say accidental—as the story of O'Brien's Desk found me rather than the other way around. But now I'm hooked. My second manuscript, The Natural Selection, is complete and I am currently working on a third. I have also been published in newspapers, professional magazines and literary anthologies. When not writing, I enjoy hiking the beach trails in my hometown of Solana Beach, California, with my husband and our two neurotic dogs, and, when lucky, our two grown children.
A Few of My Favorites
Mystery: Ian Piers, An Instance of the FingerpostPoet: Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass"
Novelist: George Eliot, Daniel Deronda
Lawyer: Clarence Darrow
Quote: "In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways."
—Edith Wharton