Lenore Hart

Lenore Hart, a fifth-generation Floridian, holds a BA from the University of Central Florida, an MSLS from Florida State, and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Old Dominion University. She has been a grant recipient and writer in residence for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Fine Arts Council, and a Visiting Writer at Flagler College in St. Augustine. She is also a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts at Sweetbriar College, and was writer in residence at The New College of Florida in Sarasota in 2005. She is currently theVisiting Writer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and also teaches in the graduate writing program at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Lenore's newest novel is Becky, the story of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Huck Finn -- as adults. It's 1910, and Mark Twain -- best known to Becky as Sammy Clemens of Hannibal -- has just passed away, as he said he would, "gone with Halley's comet." Now she's going to tell her own story as it really happened, and put back the parts Twain left out . . . such as how Injun Joe really died, and what happened when she and Tom were trapped in the cave, and why she finally rejected Tom and came to marry his cousin Sid. But can she really forget the sweet-talking, maddening, irresponsible Tom Sawyer?

The novel before that was Ordinary Springs (PenguinPutnam, January 2005) set in Florida in the fifties and sixties. Pubisher's Weekly called it "Gritty, fierce . . . a fine vintage portrait of a tough girl whom life teaches to be tougher." Dory Gamble's mother left when she was a baby, so she was raised by her father, Owen, and grew up working alongside him in their hardware store in Ordinary Springs. She always thought the two of them would be inseparable. But when she's fifteen, Owen falls for their attractive new neighbor, whose husband is too sick to even come outside. Soon Dory understands how one betrayal can breed and multiply; how willing even good people can be to hurt each other. When she lashes out against everything she once loved, nothing can ever be the same.

Lenore's first young adult novel, The Treasure of Savage Island, published in September 2005 by Dutton, was nominated for several Young Adult book awards. She is now at work on two new novels.

She has also lectured or taught at Florida State University, George Mason University, Florida Community College at Jacksonville, Eastern Shore Community College, the Cape May Institute, The U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Eckerd College, Old Dominion University, The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Christpher Newport University, and Tidewater College in Virginia Beach. She's been featured on Voice of America and in three segments of the syndicated PBS television series "Writer To Writer." She lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia with her husband, novelist David Poyer, and their daughter, Naia.

To arrange for an appearance, please get in touch with Hilary Rubin Teeman, at St. Martin's Press. She's at (800) 221-7945, ext. 5637. Or you can write Lenore direct at PO Box 647, Nassawadox, VA 23413-0647.

For Hart's bio, or for more information on each book, see the links below. To find out more about the low residency MA/MFA in Creative Writing at Wilkes University, see <http://www.wilkes.edu/pages/412.asp>.

Lenore Hart - Biography	*Waterwoman*	*T. Rex at Swan Lake*
*Ordinary Springs*	*The Treasure of Savage Island*	Becky