Laura Whitcomb

Laura Whitcomb (born December 19, 1958) is an American novelist and writing teacher best known for the young adult ghost novel A Certain Slant of Light (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005) and her two Writer's Digest craft books on the writing process. She grew up in Pasadena, California, earned her English degree from California State University, Northridge, in 1993, and has taught language arts in California and Hawaii. She lives in Wilsonville, Oregon.

A Certain Slant of Light follows a ghost named Helen who has spent more than a century drifting among living hosts and finds herself unexpectedly seen by a high school boy named James. The novel was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection in 2005, has been translated into eleven languages including Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, German, Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Turkish, and Taiwanese, and has been optioned for film by Summit Entertainment. Its sequel Under the Light (2013) returned to the same characters years later.

Her other fiction includes The Fetch (2009), a historical fantasy set against the fall of the Romanovs that was named to the top ten of the 2009 Children's Indie Next List. Her writing books include Your First Novel: A Top Agent and a Published Author Share the Keys to Achieving Your Dream (2006), co-written with literary agent Ann Rittenberg, and Novel Shortcuts: Ten Techniques That Ensure a Great First Draft (2009), built around finding the emotional core of a story and identifying the crosshairs moments where the plot pivots on a single decision.

She has won three Kay Snow Awards and was once a runner-up in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the worst opening sentence of an imaginary science fiction novel. She sings madrigals with the Sherwood Renaissance Singers, plays the harp, and was once the props mistress for the Portland Christmas Revels.