L. J. Smith

Lisa Jane Smith was an American author of young adult fiction best known for her best-selling series The Vampire Diaries, which has been turned into a successful television show. Her books, particularly The Vampire Diaries and Night World, have been in the New York Times Best Seller list and have been nominated for five awards. Smith was born in Fort Lauderdale Florida. Her reported date of birth varies, with sources noting as early as 1958 or 1959 or as late as 1965. As a child, she grew up in Villa Park, California and attended Villa Park High School. It was here that her high school English teacher, Zoe Gibbs, gave Smith the confidence to write. Smith studied experimental psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She later attended San Francisco State University to obtain teaching credentials. Smith began her career as an elementary school teacher, but left in 1989 after three years to pursue writing. Smith has said that she realized she wanted to be a writer sometime between kindergarten and first grade, "when a teacher praised a horrible poem I'd written", and she began writing in earnest in elementary school.