Photo © 2016 Marcene Bowen
Lara Deloza (née Lara M. Zeises) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but moved to the great state of Delaware when she was just four years old. She graduated from the University of Delaware in 1997, with a BA in English and enough real-world experience to tell you exactly what one can do with that degree.
After a gap year spent working as a journalist in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Lara decided to go to graduate school. She wanted to learn how to write TV shows, and enrolled in Emerson College, in Boston, Massachusetts, with that goal in mind. Her day job prevented her from taking a screenwriting class that first semester. Instead, she landed in a young adult novel writing workshop—and never looked back.
Lara sold her first novel, Bringing Up the Bones, just two days after earning her MFA in in Creative Writing with a concentration in Writing for Children. It was published under her maiden name in 2002; three more books—Contents Under Pressure, Anyone But You, and The Sweet Life of Stella Madison—followed over the next several years.
In 2004, Lara published True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet under the pen name Lola Douglas. In 2008, it was adapted into a Lifetime movie starring JoJo and Valerie Bertinelli (the latter of which was born in Delaware, oddly enough). The novel’s sequel, More Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet, followed in 2006.
(Side note: All of the above books can be found on Amazon for, like, one cent plus shipping. If you’re interested, that is.)
In August 2010, Lara began working for the International Reading Association (now International Literacy Association) and took a step back from writing. Her “retirement” didn’t last long; in 2013, Lara’s Lola editor, Kristen Pettit, came out of retirement herself. Kristen pitched Lara a project and just like that, they pulled her back in.
You First, the second installment of the tween novel series Picture Perfect, was published in January 2015. This was around the same time that Lara was finishing up a draft of the manuscript that would become Winning, her eighth novel. Winning was released in June 2016.
Lara lives in Wilmington, Delaware with her husband and their two babies (one human, one canine), in a house desperately in need of a second bathroom. A larger kitchen would be nice, too.