Olivia Marie StifflerOlivia Stiffler was born in Kalispell, Montana, but cradled in the Midwest by a 20-year-old mother, one of 14 children, and a father raw from both the harsh life of a Missouri dirt farm and his stint in the infantry during World War II. She discovere writing in third grade at St. Ambrose Elementary School when her teacher, Sr. Mary Eustace, direct from Ireland, rewrote the paragraph she was assigned with such flare that Olivia tried ever after to emulate her. Her urge to write was cemented when, as a high school senior, she wrote a fairytale that sparked so much controversy she was threatened with expulsion. At 19 she married; at 20, became a mother. A favorite professor hooked her on poetry, but she gave up college to help support her family, and the urge to write went underground. For the next 14 years she worked as a secretary, then as a stenotype reporter--capturing other people's words--for 26 more. At age 52 she divorced her old life, her first husband, longstanding career, and hometown. Olivia remarried and relocated with her current husband, a retired FBI agent, to Bluffton, South Carolina, where they watch birds and alligators and dance the Carolina Shag like nobody's watching. She writes what she likes in her own words. She is the author of OTHERWISE, WE ARE SAFE (Dos Madres Press, 2013). Read More Read Less