Diane Les Becquets

Diane Les Becquets is the author of BREAKING WILD (Berkley, Penguin Random House), an Indie Next Pick and a national bestseller, which received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist. She is also the author of three young adult novels: THE STONES OF MOURNING CREEK (Kirkus star review); LOVE, CAJUN STYLE (Booklist star review) and SEASON OF ICE, the latter being the recipient of a Pen American Fellowship. Other awards she has received include a BCCB Blue Ribbon Award, the Maine Lupine Award, ALA Best Book of the Year, Foreward Reviews Gold Winner Book of the Year, Volunteer State Book Award Selection, and Garden State Book Award Finalist. Les Becquets is a faculty member of Mountainview MFA, the Master of Fine Arts Program in Fiction and Nonfiction at Southern New Hampshire University, where she was the program director for over three years. She has served as a judge for the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission, and has taught writing workshops at venues across the country, including the University of Mississippi, Auburn University, the New Hampshire Writers' Project, the Department of Forestry, Writers Conference at Ocean Park, Writers in Paradise, the Arkansas Writers Festival, the Telluride Arts District, and at shelters for Katrina victims. A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Les Becquets received her B.A. in English from Auburn University and her M.F.A. from the University of Southern Maine. In addition to teaching creative writing, she has worked as a medical journalist, an archaeology assistant in the fields of Colorado, a marketing writer, a sand and gravel dispatcher, a lifeguard, a motivational speaker, and a music teacher. She is a volunteer at Back in the Saddle Equine Therapy Center and an avid outdoors woman, enjoying archery, bicycling, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, backpacking, and hiking in the woods with her Labrador, Lacey. Before moving to New Hampshire, where she now resides with her husband, she lived in a small ranching town in Northwestern Colorado for almost fourteen years, raising her three sons.