DAUGHTER IN THE DARK
AUTHORS
Laurie Boutwell is a wife, mother, educator, and survivor. This memoir is her story - one of academic, social, and interpersonal struggles manifesting from childhood abuse and abandonment - and one of overcoming these obstacles as an independent forward-thinking college graduate, family member, and functioning adult.
After rigorous determination to change her life's course, Boutwell received degrees from West Valley College and Cal State San Bernardino, then began a teaching career of over thirty years in the Inland Empire. Her passion and dedication for helping children have garnered her the Arrowhead Regional Literary Award, the San Bernardino County Social Studies Teacher of the Year award, and the Redlands Unified School District Teacher of the Year award. She has served on district committees for curriculum reform in
reading, writing, social studies, and math, and as a panelist on the CAASPP Winner of Writing Celebration for Fontana Unified School District. She is a mentor and master teacher to student teachers, a guest speaker at K-12 institutions, and a proud parent of four college graduates.
She continues to be an advocate for education in her community, mostly recently with volunteer work on local school productions of Annie and Peter Pan. She is dedicating the next chapter of her life to spreading a message of hope and healing for women through the publication of Daughter In The Dark. In a literary agent, she seeks someone equally passionate about women's issues, social reform, and public engagement.
Gordon Freeman studied creative writing at Brown University and film and TV production at USC. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and active participant in its LGBTQ+ committee, with directing credits including Diary of a Future President for Disney+ and the festival-winning feature film No Answer on Prime Video and YouTube with 1.5 million views, which he also wrote. He has shot for National Geographic and worked on seventy titles in film and TV including Oscar-winning La La Land and Emmy-winning Blindspotting.
He is actively building his platform and networking via his memberships in the DGA, the Elks Lodge, the USC Alumni Association, &
the LGBTQ+ community. While he queries literary agents with Daughter In The Dark he creates content including the Black Topaz podcast and blog and his next novel Mesmer, a literary fiction about queer Mensa teens dangerously addicted to entertainment.
In literature his voice speaks to his background in cinema, channeling emotion and complex themes through language that jumps off the page. His characters are bold and his style unique, wrought with a fresh wit that challenges the medium itself, exhuming the written word from stale retrospection to an exalted and limitless frontier.
A relentless and prolific writer on an inevitable path to success, Freeman explores race, class, sexuality, and identity through symbolism, dreams, and the nuances of human connection both on the page and on-screen. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband and two dogs and will get some rest one day... when he's dead... or a household name, whichever comes first.