Jennifer Ziegler

Jennifer Ziegler is a writer, speaker, blogger, mother, spicy food lover, caffeine addict, and movie buff. Her early years were mainly spent trying, unsuccessfully, to copy hairstyles of famous female pop figures. But she also wrotea lot. Underneath her bed you would find, among the detritus of discarded clothes and cookie wrappers, several spiral notebooks full of short stories, unfinished novels, elaborate doodles for future tattoos, and a comprehensive thesis on who was the cutest member of Duran Duran.

She didnt realize she was preparing for a career, but all that practice made writing feel comfortable, almost like a reflex (which, coincidentally, is a song by Duran Duran). Later, she received degrees in English and Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and taught middle school language arts, all of which helped to inspire her. Now she writes YA fiction full time. Her book, How Not to Be Popular (Delacorte, 2008), has been named to the Lone Star Book List and was an International Reading Associations Young Adults Choice. Her newest book, Sass and Serendipity (Delacorte, 2011), gives Jane Austen a South-Texas spin.