"I was in my forties and teaching magazine writing for the Journalism Department at the University of New Mexico. I was hired on a fluke. The professor who was scheduled to teach the course became ill, so the chair of the department, my personal friend Tony Hillerman, asked me to fill in for a semester. Tony knew I’d never been to college and didn’t care; he just knew I’d written successfully for magazines for years. The original professor never returned, and someone else replaced Tony as Chair and automatically kept me on. I discovered I loved teaching writing and started to get worried that my deep dark secret, (no college!) might be discovered, so I began taking courses under my married name, Lois Arquette, hoping I could get a degree before someone “outed” me. In the course of that endeavor, I took a juvenile literature class where they were studying “Lois Duncan books.” My fellow students were excitedly writing A-plus papers about how many of my books were based on Greek myths. I had never even read those myths!"
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Horror authorsNovelists from the United StatesChildren's authorsWomen journalists from the United States20th-century poets from the United States
Original Language: English
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On teaching and attending college, interview with Megan Abbott (2011)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lois_Duncan
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Lois Duncan
Lois Duncan Steinmetz (28 April 1934 – 15 June 2016) was an American novelist, poet, and journalist who primarily wrote young adult literature and horror and suspense novels, many of which—including I Know What You Did Last Summer, Summer of Fear, and Killing Mr. Griffin—were adapted into feature films.
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