About Denise Pattiz Bogard

has been writing professionally for more than 40 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.Her first novel, The Middle Step, was released in 2015. Her new novel After Elise was named a finalist in the 2017 Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Contest, novel-in-progress category and named a  St. Louis Post-Dispatch 2018 “St. Louis and Missouri-connected book of particular appeal.” It is out now from Ardent Writers Press. Denise is the founder and former director of the St. Louis Writers Workshop and has also worked as an adjunct professor, an associate editor and as a co-founding partner of a public relations agency. Most recently, she coordinated the writing program at Lift For Life Academy middle and high school, a Title 1 charter school in downtown St. Louis. Denise earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and her BS in journalism and history from Indiana University. Denise lives in St. Louis with her husband and dog, with frequent visits to her three children and five grandchildren. She is hard at work on a third novel.