Velda Johnston(1912-1997)

Velda Johnston (1911-1997) was born in Prosperity, Missouri near Joplin, and raised in California. She began writing short stories while still a student at the University of California at Los Angeles. Her efforts met with immediate success, causing her to abandon earlier plans to be come a teacher. She lived most of her life in New York. She and her husband divided their time between an apartment in Manhattan and a nineteenth-century house on eastern Long Island. She died on January 3, 1997 in Palm Desert, California.

I looked forward to being able to support myself and my mother by dashing off a short story occasionally after school. But I was in my third year at UCLA before I was able to sell my second story. It was really very rough getting started.