About the Author

THE MIDDLE STEP tells the story of a middle-aged white suburban woman who impulsively accepts a job to be a foster mother to four at-risk teenage girls, who have been pulled from their homes. Almost immediately, Lisa Harris discovers how little she knows about urban poverty and living with children of a different race, religion, culture and background. Doggedly Lisa stays on, struggling to create a "family" with girls who have known only trouble and sadness in their lives.

The novel is set in North St. Louis and explores the intersection of race, poverty and family-- a topic more important and more timely than ever.

While it is a work of literary fiction, the novel draws on Denise Pattiz Bogard's personal passion and on her experiences of the past 15 years as a writing and English teacher in a Title One charter middle and high school in downtown St. Louis, Lift For Life Academy.

Denise has been writing professionally for more than 30 years and has had her award-winning fiction and non-fiction published in, among others, The Oklahoma Literary Review, Newsweek, Lady's Circle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Teacher Magazine. Two of her essays have been anthologized in Are We Feeling Better Yet? Women's Encounters with Health Care in America (Penultimate Press, 2008) and Winter Harvest (Brodsky Library Press) . THE MIDDLE STEP is her first novel.

Denise earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and her BS in journalism and history from Indiana University. She is the founder of St. Louis Writers Workshop and coordinated the writing program at Lift For Life Academy charter middle and high school in downtown St. Louis. Previously, Denise worked as an adjunct professor at Webster University, as a reporter and as a co-founding partner of a full-service public relations agency.

Read Next Recommendation