"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." - Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

Lauren Hruska-Herrick, MA, is a creative writer of novels, children's literature, young adult fiction, screenplays, and mediocre poetry. When words fail her, she creates cartoon illustrations on the sublime absurdities known to anyone who has ever tried being human for very long. Against the better judgement of her thinking brain, she believes in hope and puts all of her faith in art and creativity as the road to a better future.

As a water treatment analyst and former winemaker, Ms. Hruska-Herrick has devoted her professional life to tending the world and its finite resources. She has worked for wineries in New Zealand and Australia, where she learned an appreciation for a non-American style of land stewardship and conservation. Her travels instilled in her a sense of belonging on a planetary—rather than national—scale, and she now strives to share this sense of striving towards unity and belonging with her family, friends, and — she hopes! — her readers.

Ms. Hruska-Herrick has an MA in engaged humanities and creativity from Pacifica Graduate Institute and incorporates her interests in creative consciousness, ecology, and the absurd into her work. Her masterworks include nascent novels about a winemaker-detective, her autistic brother, and a church in the grips of a surprise cult leader; several children's stories about dreams, autism, and honoring the environment; and "Omelet, Danish Prince," an ode to Dr. Seuss, William Shakespeare, and the accessible grace of comedy.

Ms. Hruska-Herrick also enjoys knitting, and reupholstering vintage furniture pieces that her husband at first deems "not worth the effort." A former inmate of the traffic jams around Boston, Massachusetts, she has now lives with her husband and two young finger-painting geniuses in Paso Robles, California.

Articles by Lauren Hruska-Herrick, MA