bio

Laura Jean Schneider is an award-winning journalist freelancing for the Ellensburg Daily Record in Kittitas County, Wash.
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Schneider has covered numerous beats, from crime to features, for The Copper Era, The Eastern Arizona Courier, Green Valley News and The Port Townsend Leader. She's also been published in The Writer, Montana Quarterly, High Country News, Edible Santa Fe, New Mexico Magazine, The Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. In 2019, she received a grant from Culture and Animals Foundation, and her resulting manuscript, Maverick, was published by Andante Books in 2020.

Schneider has presented at the How It Happens festival in Bozeman, Montana, and at the Western Literature Association's 51st annual conference in Big Sky, Montana. Her writing earned an invitation to the Université Bordeaux Montaigne to present on a panel for the Society for the Study of American Women Writers.

She has a BA in english language and literature from Smith College and an MFA in fiction writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.