Diana
Greenwood was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as a Canadian born abroad.
She spent her young years in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and has fond memories of
snow forts, snowball fights with neighborhood kids and ski races on the
hills that formed when snow plows cleared the street. Long winters meant
plenty of time indoors, too, and Diana devoured book after book while
always craving more. She wrote stories and poems and complicated scripts
for summer performances in the back yard. When a family road trip to sunny
California resulted in a move to the northern part of the state, Diana
gave away her snowshoes but kept her Bobbsey Twins series, which remains
on her bookshelves today. She held dual citizenship until the age of 21
when she decided to remain in the U.S.
First published in a local newspaper
at the age of eighteen, Diana switched gears in college to pursue a
business degree that led to a successful career in commercial design and
store planning. Her job required travel across the country, satisfying the
wanderlust begun by that first family trip. But she never forgot her first
byline and yearned for the written word, scribbling story ideas in the
margins of blueprints while flying coast to coast.
Diana returned to writing in 2002 as a
fulltime freelancer and today works from her office in the Napa Valley,
near enough to airports to hop a plane when the travel bug bites. A
respected wine and food writer, her work has appeared in publications such
as California Visitor Review, The Napa Valley Register, The San
Francisco Chronicle, the American Booksellers Association
Newsletter, and Napa Valley Life Magazine, in which her monthly
column spotlighting local teachers ran for two years. She is also a staff
writer for Brehm Communications with a focus on wine and travel for the
print and online Wine Country This Week Magazine. She has organized
and hosted major author events, sketched video voiceovers for public
television, teaches a memoir class for adults, and continues as a copy
writer and editor for private clients.
As much as Diana enjoys freelancing, her
leading love is writing stories for teens, traveling through the eyes of
her characters as they embark upon life-changing journeys. Insight,
coming in May 2011 from Zondervan, is her debut novel. She is represented
by Jen Rofé of Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Inc.
Diana is a member of SCBWI, a member
blogger with the Mixed-Up Files of Middle Grade Authors,
and can be found on Facebook. She is a college football fan, loves to ski,
dabbles in mixed media collage, and collects illustrated antique
children’s books. She is a member of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Napa,
California, where she is Youth Group Leader and active in many facets of
the church community. She has a thousand favorite books but if she could
only pick one that influenced her along the way, she would choose I
Heard the Owl Call My Name, by Margaret Craven. Diana’s tattered copy
lives on her nightstand in case she needs it in the middle of the night.
Diana Greenwood is currently planning her
next road trip. If you're behind her car on the highway, don't follow too
closely. She brakes for bookstores.
