Lisa Yount

Lisa Yount is a (now retired) writer of nonfiction books, primarily about science and scientists, for older children and young adults. She holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University (1966). For the first 25 years of her career, she wrote parts of elementary and high school textbooks on almost every subject imaginable, working as a free-lance writer for publishers such as Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Macmillan, and Houghton Mifflin. For 20 more years, she wrote standalone biographies of scientists such as Rosalind Franklin and Nikola Tesla, encyclopedias of scientists such as A-Z of Women in Science and Math (most recently revised in 2015), books on the history of science such as Disease Detectives, and books outlining different opinions on controversial science-related issues such as Library in a Book: Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering. She also edited anthologies of articles on controversial issues such as At Issue: Fighting Bioterrorism. Her specialties were biomedical research and women and minority scientists. Many of her books were published by Facts on File, but Lucent Books and other publishers of young adult nonfiction also issued her books. Several of her books won awards, and in 2012 she received the Leo Politi Golden Author Award from California Readers for having the most books in the group’s California Collections over time (11 titles, some listed in multiple years, for a total of 38 entries). Since retirement she has devoted her time to her other main interest, digital fantasy collage art, which she displays on her website, www.lionlight.com, and sells at galleries and science fiction conventions. She lives in El Cerrito, California, with her husband, fellow author Harry Henderson, and a variable number of cats.