June 6 – Shelley Blanton-Stroud – Copy Boy, Tom Boy, Poster Girl, An Unlikely Prospect
Bio: Shelley Blanton-Stroud grew up in California’s Central Valley, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the field. She is recently retired from teaching writing in the California State University system. She has served as President of the Board of 916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children, and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont McKenna College. She previously co-directed Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors performed the stories of established and emerging authors.
Books: Her historical mystery series—Copy Boy, Tomboy, and Poster Girl—follows Jane Benjamin, a cross-dressing, tomato-picking, San Francisco gossip columnist who investigates crime stories that never make the front page. Her fourth novel, An Unlikely Prospect (She Writes Press, August 2025), is based on the little-known V-J Day San Francisco Peace Riot, featuring a widow publisher who fights to find her voice in 1945 journalism.