Biography
Jean Hegland was born in 1956 and raised in Pullman, Washington, just eight miles from the Washington/Idaho border. Her mother taught high school and college level English, and was the Pullman High School librarian for many years, and her father was a professor of English at Washington State University. From them she learned to love books, reading, and writing, and her father had a very profound influence on her own teaching philosophy and methods.

Jean began college at Fairhaven College in Bellingham, Washington, and received her BA in Liberal Arts from Washington State University in 1979. In 1984, after devoting several years to the kinds of jobs she is now grateful for having had because of the varied experiences they gave her—from designing and making stained glass windows to cleaning the local nursing home—she received a MA in Rhetoric and the Teaching of Composition from Eastern Washington University.

In 1984 she accepted a job in the English Department at Santa Rosa Junior College. After her first child was born in 1986, she taught part-time in that department, most frequently Creative Writing which she enjoys a great deal. She is proud of the many students she has been able to work with who have gone on to become successful writers, and equally proud of the many others who have expanded their skills and deepened their appreciation of writing on a more personal level.

Jean is a frequent speaker at writers’ conferences and workshops, as well as at universities, colleges, and bookstores. In the winters of 2003 and 2004, she taught creative writing for the Mediterranean Center for Arts and Sciences in Sicily and in spring 2003, she was Writer in Residence at the College of York St. John in York, England.

Jean and her husband live in the forests of northern California, where they keep busy watching—and trying to aid in—the fledging of their three children.