Historical
Shelley Blanton-Stroud grew up in Bakersfield, California, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who fulfilled their ambition to leave the fields. Recently retired from three decades teaching writing at San Francisco State and Sacramento State, she now consults with writers in the U.S. energy industry. She has led and supported literary and arts nonprofits, including 916 Ink, Stories on Stage Sacramento, and the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont McKenna College.
Her Jane Benjamin historical mystery series—Copy Boy, Tomboy, and Poster Girl—follows a cross-dressing tomato picker turned San Francisco gossip columnist investigating crimes that never make the front page. Her forthcoming novel, An Unlikely Prospect (She Writes Press, Aug. 2025), is based on the little-known 1945 V-J Day San Francisco Peace Riot, featuring a widow publisher fighting to report unacknowledged rapes and to claim her voice in a male-dominated field, a theme running through all her work.
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