Barbara Mariconda

Barbara Mariconda has been writing since the third grade, when her teacher submitted her poetry collection to an educational magazine - resulting in her first rejection letter. The editor urged her: "keep writing and you'll become a published author one day!" And she has – with over thirty books to her credit including an Edgar nominated middle grade, and a picture book that was a National Best Books and Children's Choice finalist and a Moonbeam Award Gold Medal winner. While writing in all genres, Barbara spends most of her time with middle grade and YA, exploring the edges and undercurrents of life that can be sensed and experienced, but never grasped – the stuff of mystery, magic, and spirituality. She is an accomplished pianist and singer, and, as a child, played a mean accordion! She's sung in the Crypt of St. Peter in the Vatican, in a top forty band, and made a recording with Big Bird! An avid traveler, Barbara's ridden a camel in the Sahara, a rickshaw in Tokyo, a hot air balloon over the Valley of the Kings, a dogsled in Alaska, climbed the Great Wall of China, kissed the Blarney Stone, soaked in the waters of Lourdes, and sailed in a gondola in Venice.When she isn't writing or traveling she's teaching teachers around the world to inspire the next generation of authors in their classrooms through her company, Empowering Writers - www.empoweringwriters.com. She has a son and a daughter, both fine artists, working in the fashion industry. Barbara lives in Shelton, CT, with her good-natured shih tzu, Little Man.