Laurie Viera Rigler's best-selling novels CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT and RUDE AWAKENINGS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT (both published by Plume in North America and by Bloomsbury in the UK) could have been considered semi-autobiographical had they not involved time travel and body switching. Her short story, INTOLERABLE STUPIDITY, in which Mr. Darcy brings charges against all the writers of Pride and Prejudice sequels, spin-offs and retellings, appears in the anthology JANE AUSTEN MADE ME DO IT (Ballantine). In addition to working on her next three novels, Laurie is the creator of the web series SEX AND THE AUSTEN GIRL, which is inspired by her Austen Addict novels. All 23 episodes can be found on her online home, janeaustenaddict.com. CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT won a Publishers Weekly Listen Up Award, and RUDE AWAKENINGS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT was nominated for a Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Mainstream Fiction. CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT was also nominated for The Jane Austen Centre's (Bath, England) Jane Austen Award for Best New Fiction.Both Austen Addict novels have also been published in France by Bragelonne and in Italy by Sperling & Kupfer, and CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT has been published in the Netherlands (Archipel).Prior to confessing a severe case of Austen addiction, Laurie teamed with Richard Roeper of Ebert & Roeper fame to write a humorous, gender-specific guide to movie rentals entitled HE RENTS, SHE RENTS: THE ULTIMATE FILM GUIDE TO THE BEST WOMEN'S FILMS AND GUY MOVIES for St.Martin's Press. She also coauthored POPPING THE QUESTION: REAL-LIFE STORIES OF MARRIAGE PROPOSALS, FROM THE ROMANTIC TO THE BIZARRE for Walker & Company.Having spent several years writing her first novel and reading all those proclamations about how aspiring novelists were more likely to win the lottery than ever get published, Laurie is passionate about encouraging other writers. Prior to coming into her own as a novelist, she spent an exciting decade as a freelance book editor working with authors of fiction and nonfiction. She has also taught workshops in storytelling technique at Vroman's, Southern California's oldest and largest independent bookstore. In addition to maintaining Jane Austen Addict, her online home, Laurie enjoys guest blogging on various book and culture sites, including PBS.org's Remotely Connected. A longtime resident of the very same Echo Park / Silverlake neighborhood in Los Angeles in which RUDE AWAKENINGS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT is set, Laurie now lives nearby in Pasadena, California, with her filmmaker husband."All this she must possess," added Darcy, "and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading." Well, if you must know, Laurie read the classics at the State University of New York at Buffalo and graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.