ABOUT

Lauren Coodley began her career tutoring students for the GED and teaching night school psychology at the local community college. She attained tenure the same year her son was born; before that, she worked at least two jobs while raising her daughter. She invented and taught classes ranging from overcoming math anxiety to children’s literature.

In l996, she received a second M.A. from Sonoma State University, this time in history. She also received two grants from the California Council for the Humanities and from the Lilly Library to further her research on Upton Sinclair. At the community college she was elected president of the faculty, chair of the social sciences division, and received the McPherson Award for distinguished teaching in 2004.

Lauren began writing books when she was invited to write a history of Napa in 2003, as well as a collection of articles about Upton Sinclair’s California. She wrote both books that summer, the first time she had not taught summer school. Since then, she has completed a quartet of books documenting Napa’s’ authentic history, compiled a multicultural history of California in documents, and brought her 20 years of study of Upton Sinclair into a new biography that emphasizes his connections to labor and his support for the struggles of women.

She continues to write articles for Napa Valley Marketplace Magazine and reviews and blurbs for a variety of publications, most of which can be read via this website. She has completed two memoirs, one in poetry — The Same River Twice –and one in prose, House of Four Doors. She has assisted in the rearing of her daughter’s two sons and looks forward to helping raise her son’s two sons.  She is deeply interested in contemporary politics and in the battle to save nature for the future of all species of life, two of many interests she shares with Upton Sinclair.