Anna Schmidt

With a successful career in genre fiction (with sales close to a million copies), Anna Schmidt is ready to head in a new direction. Her popular WWII inspy series THE PEACEMAKERS and her contemporary story about the Florida Mennonite community (A SISTER'S FORGIVENESS) both published by Barbour whet her appetite for telling larger, more complex stories. After earning a Master of Arts degree in Theater Arts from the University of Cincinnati, Jo received a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Council and national Endowment for the Arts to write a two-act play about the Holocaust. She was also a quarter-finalist in the nationally respected Nicholl Screenwriting Competition, and her screenplay was optioned for production. She has worked in professional theater companies in Virginia and Wisconsin. While employed in marketing and communication for two international companies, she wrote three books on eldercare published by AARP as well as Parkinson's Disease for Dummies published by Wiley and Sons (all under her maiden name: Jo Horne). She has also taught at the college level and is a popular presenter of hands-on workshops. She is a member of Novelists, Inc. (NINC), Historic Novel Society (HNS), andThe Author's Guild and regularly attends writing workshops and conferences to speak, learn and stay in touch.