About

Author Biography

Amanda Stanford (1980-   )

 

Family Life

Dr. Amanda Stanford was born in Guadalajara, Mexico on February 8^th, 1980. When she was two years old, her family moved to New Hope, Minnesota. She lived there until she was six years old, at which time she moved to Elk River, Minnesota. Her mother had all kinds of interesting hobbies, such as interior design and selling Mary Kay. Her father was an executive in an international company called Multi Foods. When her father’s company was merged, their family moved to Dallas, Texas. Amanda was 13 years old. She attended Renner, Shepton, and Plano Senior High School.

Early Education

Amanda was raised in a bilingual home. Both her parents spoke English and Spanish fluently, but Amanda did not learn to speak Spanish until she was 15 years old. She began writing stories as a small child, and while at St. John’s Lutheran School in Elk River, read through their entire library. Amanda was interested in all kinds of books, both fiction and non-fiction. Her interest in reading began earlier than most, and by six years old, Amanda was combing through the newspapers at the breakfast table with her father. Her favorite books for many years was the complete set of encyclopedias that her mother bought at a garage sale when she was very small.

College Education

After Amanda graduated from high school in 1998, she attended the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. She initially wanted to study voice, but her father did not think that would best prepare her for life, so she chose English Literature. He would have prefered she studied a science-based course, but she was rather hopeless at math.

During her junior year at the University of North Texas, Amanda studied abroad at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland.  It was there that she was awarded the Keith Wright Prize in Literature for her short story, “Four Strong Winds”.  She returned to graduate from UNT in 2002 and began travelling internationally, teaching English in Mexico, Egypt, and Japan, until she returned to Scotland in 2005 to complete her MSc (MFA equivalent) in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh.

She briefly returned to Plano, Texas, in 2006-2009 and taught Composition and English Literature at Tarrant County College.  In 2009 Amanda went back to the University of Edinburgh to pursue her PhD in Creative Writing under the tutelage of Scottish author Robert Alan Jamieson.  That same year she accepted the Sloan Prize for her short story, “The Wee Lammie.”

Amanda Stanford was awarded a PhD in English Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh in 2013, and currently teaches academic writing principals for the University of Maryland University College.

Career

Dr. Stanford has been a travelling English language teacher since 2002. She has taught college English language and literature classes since 2006. She is a career writer of children’s stories, historical fiction, and articles. In addition, Dr. Stanford runs The REWORKD Press, which publishes literary fiction, children’s fiction, and Spanish translation.  She is currently completing her first YA series for middle level readers, The Phoenix Child series, and will soon begin a new novel based on her time living in Japan.