Jan Stites is the author of the novels Edgewise and Reading the Sweet Oak. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree from Purdue University, both in history and English. She has held a multitude of jobs, including screenwriter, screenwriting instructor at San Francisco State University and the University of California–Berkeley, waitress, secretary, middle school teacher, scuba diving travel writer, journalist, transcriber for doctors and documentary filmmakers, teacher in Kenya and the Yucatán, and translator for American doctors in Mexico. She is from Missouri, where she has vacationed extensively in the Ozarks. She currently resides in Northern California with her husband.
