Dianne K. Salerni
She graduated from St. Mark’s High School in Wilmington, Delaware and received her Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education from the University of Delaware. She subsequently earned a Master’s in Language Arts Education at the University of Pennsylvania before taking a job teaching in the Avon Grove School District, where she taught fourth and fifth grade for 25 years.
Now, instead of teaching, Dianne writes, blogs, and chauffeurs her daughters to their various activities. She spends her free time hanging around creepy cemeteries and climbing 2000 year-old pyramids in the name of book research. She loves visiting the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, especially to ski.
Dianne’s first novel, We Hear the Dead, is a YA historical based on the real story of 19th century teenage spirit mediums Maggie and Kate Fox. Her second novel, another YA historical, The Caged Graves, is a Junior Library Guild Selection and was inspired by two real caged graves in an abandoned Pennsylvania cemetery. Her debut book for children, The Eighth Day, was released in 2014 to critical acclaim and is the first in a fantasy series of the same name.
Author's Comment: My first middle grade book, The Eighth Day, is special to me. I wrote my YA historicals – including two that have not yet found a home with a publisher – while working full time as a fifth grade teacher. When I started working on The Eighth Day, my students said, "It's about time you wrote something for us!"
And writing for middle grade turned out to be so rewarding! There's a lot more fun and humor in these books than in any of my others, even though it's an action adventure. Plus, I moved out of my established genre (historical) into urban fantasy, which I wasn't sure I could do. The Eighth Day taught me to take risks with my writing.
Nationality: American