Virginia Slachman

Virginia Slachman was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and has taught creative writing and literature at the college level for over twenty years. The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships for writing, she's published in the U.S. extensively as well as in the UK. She's the author of several volumes of poetry and Many Brave Hearts, a memoir about her family's experience with PTSD. She then turned her creative skills to fiction and has been publishing novels for the last several years. The Lost Ode is the first in her mystery series set on a Thoroughbred breeding farm in Kentucky; it's been followed by a new "Bluegrass" series whose titles include Blood in the Bluegrass and most recently, Betrayed in the Bluegrass. Though raised in the Midwest, after college Slachman traveled the country, finally settling in Los Angeles and then Aspen, Colorado, where she served as Associate Director of the Aspen Writers Conference and senior poetry editor of Aspen Anthology. She learned to ski there, and still insists one of the best places she's ever lived was just outside Aspen Valley in a one-room cabin ringed by mountains. Later, teaching at the University of Cincinnati led to a stay on a Thoroughbred stud farm in the heart of Bluegrass Country just over the river in Kentucky. There she met Derby and Preakness winners and got a "behind-the-scenes" peak into breeding and training racehorses while doing research for her well-received first novel. Trips to Lexington have continued over the years to conduct research for her "Bluegrass" novels and she continues to love, support, and work on behalf of Thoroughbred welfare. These days, you'll find Slachman teaching and working with her own ex-racehorse, Corredor dela Isla (Dorian) ; she's come full circle and now lives in a small, historic district in the heart of St. Louis.