Janine Ellen Young

Born in Santa Monica, Janine Ellen Young spent her childhood in a succession of "American Dream" homes, complete with the requisite heated pool, two-car garage and a seemingly endless number of neighboring, dysfunctional families. In 1980 she toured Europe, and lived for a month in Cambridge, England before subsequently receiving both Bachelors and Masters Degrees in English Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. Hailed by the late Theodore Sturgeon as the "most powerful" young writer of the 1979 Texas A&M writer's workshop, Janine has labored diligently to live up to that distinguished author's daunting praise ever since. As an English teacher, Young has been lecturing and teaching classes on speculative fiction for more than 26 years. The Bridge is her second novel, for which she received a nomination for the Philip K. Dick award in 2000. She teaches Creative Writing at Santa Monica College and lives near the ocean in California with her husband, science fiction/fantasy author Doselle Young, and their cat Anais.