Rachel, Lea: - Lea Rachel comes from a literary background. Her grandmother, Beki Bahar, is an internationally published Turkish author and poet and her uncle, Anthony Kosnik, co-authored a number of well-respected liturgical books. Lea has been writing short stories since she was a little girl, and while in college at The University of Michigan she had two short stories published in competitive University of Michigan literary publications, Prism and The Write Stuff.Over the years Lea has traveled, wrote, and established a career as a university professor. Her first published book, The Other Shakespeare, won an honorable mention from the London-based Wishing Shelf Book Awards. The Other Shakespeare tells the story of William Shakespeare, had he been born a woman. Drawing inspiration from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Lea Rachel imagines the difficulties a female Shakespeare might have had, trying to pursue her craft while breaking the bounds of modern convention.Lea's most recent published book, Seeking Forgiveness, similarly investigates themes of representation and cultural repression. It tells the story of inter-racial adoption from the standpoint of a white woman who adopts a Black son and finds that she has no idea what in the world she is doing. A semi-autobiographical narrative memoir, Seeking Forgiveness draws deeply from Lea Rachel's personal experiences with adoption and the raising of an inter-racial family.Lea has attended the University of Iowa summer writing workshops, and is a dedicated member of a local, and enthusiastic, St. Louis writing group. You can read samples of her writing, including the award-winning Insidious Red Parasite, on her writing page.