John B. Severance

"Somewhere in my high school years I discovered that I enjoyed the process of writing, whether it was an expository essay for history or a creative piece for English class. After several decades in education, I still enjoy ordering words, whether it's a free-wheeling letter to a friend or the laborious constructing and reconstructing of sentences in a chapter of a book in progress. To me, all writing seems fundamentally creative."

"I enjoy writing not because it comes easily to me (it doesn't), but I take pleasure in concentrating on phrasing and rephrasing until the juxtaposition of words is as clear and balanced as I can make it. It matters little if the day's output is ten pages or one paragraph. The feeling of accomplishment is the same.

"My current professional efforts are in the field of young adult biographies. My intention is to show that leaders who appear super-human in the pages of history were, in fact, very much like the rest of us. They became great only when they made the effort to reach beyond their ordinary human weaknesses.

"I am busily picking away at projects in nonfiction, but if that vein ever gives out, I would happily try fiction. Language is the raw material awaiting the hand of the wordsmith."

-John B. Severance