About Laura
Photo by Laura Dobbs
Laura Oliver is the author of The Story Within: New Insights and Inspiration for Writers (Alpha Books/Penguin 2011). In addition, she is an award-winning writer and creative writing instructor at St. John’s College and The Writer’s Center. Oliver has also taught both fiction and essay writing at the University of Maryland.
Oliver’s fiction and essays are published in national newspapers, magazines and top-tier literary reviews (The Washington Post, Country Living Magazine, The Writer Magazine, Glimmer Train Stories, Charleston Magazine, Portland Magazine, The Baltimore Review.) Among other distinctions, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, a Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Oliver holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing and Literature from Bennington College,a Bachelor of Arts in English from Washington College, and has completed writing seminars in creative non-fiction at the University of Iowa.
Oliver has completed professional education seminars on positive psychology taught by the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania and numerous professional education seminars sponsored by the Maryland Psychological Association.
The Story Within Blog 
Laura, heard you speak at the BTO writers conference, and was inspired by your talk to enough to immediately order your book, The Story Within. It has been enormously helpful, both the tried and true advice of writing as well as the innovative approaches. Most of all, I turn to it when I feel like giving up, and it helps remind me why we are all doing this in the first place. Wrote a nice shout out to the book on my review blog, FrayedDustjackets. Keep it up; I hope to take one of your seminars some day.
Thank you so very much. That’s really great to hear and reaching others, connecting, makes all this have meaning. I truly am grateful that you took the time to write. Thank you again. I’ll be checking out your blog as well. I’m behind posting on mine because I’ve been in New Zealand for the last month. Thought I’d get some writing done. Ha.