Candace Toft

I grew up in Wheatland, Wyoming, have lived in Montana, Colorado and California and have a total of 11 dear children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My day job has always been in education, first as a teacher, then as a middle school principal. I have been the Director of Credentials at National University in San Diego and an adjunct professor there. I won my first award in 1999 for Best Personal Essay in University Publications, Western Region; the piece, entitled "Not Just Another Cancer Story" had been submitted on behalf of the National University periodical Insight and was later published in Coping Magazine, under the title, "The Love That Sees Me Through". In 2000, my novel A Mingled Yarn won first runner-up in the San Diego Book Awards unpublished novel, so I submitted two pieces in 2002 and won runner-up for poetry Chapbook with Poems to My Mother, and for The Trap in the category of Novelist Grant Award. In 2004, my co-author Gordon Ooley and I won first place in San Diego Book Awards Unpublished novel category for Emergence. In 2009 I was awarded a grant from the California Council for the Humanities to collect and publish local stories which became Small Moments in Time: Memories of Lassen County. I have been on the Advisory Board of San Diego Writers, Ink and also co-taught a class for that group, "Become a More Powerful Writer," with the renowned essayist Sue Diaz. My husband Matt Levine and I recently moved to Susanville, California, an idyllic small town in the Sierras where he serves as Director Enrollment at Lassen Community College and where I am happily ensconced as editor of the Historical Society Newsletter.