Sonya Sones

I was born in Boston and overprotected in the nearby suburb of Newton. I thought I would be an artist when I grew up. I loved sneaking upstairs to a tiny room in our attic, where I could while away the hours drawing pictures of dinosaurs. The summer I turned seventeen, I fell in love with making animated films (not to mention at least a couple of boys). Soon after, I enrolled in Hampshire College and began teaching animation to children all across the country, while I earned my degree, a B.A. in filmmaking and photography. I went on to teach film at Harvard University, which was pretty astonishing, considering I was only a few years older than my students and I probably couldn't have even gotten in to the school if I had applied! Then, I moved to Hollywood to work for a famous movie director as his personal assistant. But I was fired after a month, because I wasn't very good (okay, I was very bad) at bringing coffee to people. I decided to stay in Hollywood anyhow, and found work as an animator, and then as a production assistant on a Woody Allen movie called Interiors. After that, I worked as a still photographer and script supervisor on Ron Howard's first film, Grand Theft Auto. Eventually, I became a film editor, cutting TV shows like L.A. Law and movies like the cult classic, River's Edge - which had Keanu Reeves' first love scene in it! I also edited a trailer for a movie called Urban Cowboy, with John Travolta sitting right there next to me, making suggestions. Then I met my future husband, Bennett, at a taping of a show called Mork and Mindy. Soon after, we got married and I gave birth to our beautiful daughter, Ava. I wanted to be able to spend lots of time with her, so I stopped editing. I ended up starting a small hand-painted baby clothes company instead, selling my wares to Neiman Marcus and Macy's. This was perfect, because I could paint the clothes while Ava took her naps. But after awhile, I got tired of trying to come up with one more adorable dino design, or another darling little bunny. I needed to find something new to satisfy my creative urges. By then I had a wonderful son, too, named Jeremy. And since I loved reading to both my children, I decided to try my hand at writing books for kids. So I enrolled in a poetry class at UCLA, taught by Myra Cohn Livingston. It was Myra who set me on the path to writing my first book, Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy.When I'm not writing, or traveling around the country speaking about writing and giving poetry writing workshops, I bake, dance, read, worry and hunt for buried treasure at flea markets and in vintage clothing stores. I live with my family, twenty-six blocks from the beach, not far from Hollywood.