JERI CHASE FERRIS is the award-winning author of twelve biographies for children and young adults, published by Lerner Books and HoughtonMifflin/Harcourt. She specializes in biographies of people from 1776 to 1936 who overcame difficulties or discrimination or worse, to do great and important deeds for America. Many of her books are about multicultural heroes who, until recently, have been sadly omitted from history. Others are about important people you may not know, yet. For example - Noah Webster! NOAH WEBSTER & HIS WORDS, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, is an SCBWI Golden Kite Award winner for best nonfiction book of 2012. Her books have won lots of other awards too (see www.jerichaseferris.com).

Jeri retired from a happy 30-year teaching career several years ago in order to write full time. As a history major, Jeri loves the research process (easier than actually writing!) and she travels all over the world to research and collect information on her subjects. She is currently completing a historical fiction for young adults set in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia) during the 900-day Siege in WWII. This book, SURROUNDED: THE NAZI NOOSE, comes from her passion for Russia and its history, culture, and people, and her desire to convey the unimaginable experiences of the people and youth of 1941 Leningrad to American young people and adults. 

When she''s not writing or traveling or researching or reading, Jeri is probably riding her big sorrel rescue horse Pamyat ("to remember" in Russian), or dancing, or acting, or singing, or playing with her Scottie dog Nasha ("ours" in Russian). Or she might be studying Russian (one of these days she''ll get it), or working on her blog or her newspaper column. Speaking of riding, when Jeri was demonstrating her horseback riding skills at the Nebraska State Fair some years ago, she fell off her horse and broke her arm in front of the whole crowd. (One of these days she''ll get it.)