Sandra Lee Richards

About the author

Sandra Lee Richards grew up in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Her family life wasn’t exactly what you’d call typical although she didn’t realize that until her teens. Her strength and tenacity helped her survive the years of tyranny she was forced to endure. And so did books. Books helped her to live in another time and another place, if just for an hour or so. Books became her mainstay during the countless dark times in not only her childhood but during her first marriage as well. 

Sandra studied a year at Michigan State University with every intention of continuing, however, her future was upended when her mother decided to move the family to California, demanding that she move with her. There were no choices for a daughter like her back then.

Sandra’s daughters encouraged her to write her memoir. They’d heard bits and pieces of her childhood over the years but wanted to know the whole story. It was at their urging that spurred her on.

It was a turning point for her, when she participated in two six-week memoir-writing workshops with Stefanie Wilder-Taylor where she was able to engage with both peer and expert mentor feedback. And her courses with Jerry Jenkins provided helpful tips in outlining and comprehensive self-editing. She also leaned on her elder daughter, author and current PhD student in creative writing, fiction, at Georgia State University, for structural and sentence-level finessing. The inspiration she received helped her forge through the rough drafts and complete her book.

She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband, Tom and their 17-year-old cat, Simon. She can usually be found in her kitchen cooking and baking up a storm or in her recliner curled up with a good book during the cold months or boating while entertaining family and friends at their Indiana lakehouse during the warmer months. 

…A DAUGHTER LIKE YOU is her first book.

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