Laurayne Mae Phalen holds a BA, Summa Cum Laude, and MA in Speech Communication Studies. Emphasis of interest were in Family, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal Communication. Graduating from SFSU, she went on to teach Speech at her alma mater.

As a six year member of Women Writers of the Well, she created the blog, Here Is Where I Am. Running from 2018 to 2022, it contained poetry, social-political commentary, and self-insight. Laurayne is also published in two anthologies.  

Her current writing explores the hypothesis that human beings are at their best when they work to nurture the unique, creative expression in self – and in each other.  

Laurayne has two adult daughters and two granddaughters. She lives in the serene foothills of Northern California with her Cavalier King Charles, Max, and two kittens, Lily and Herman. 

Carol Menaker is a writer living in the Sierra Foothills in Northern California, where she retired after a career writing and managing communications for universities and nonprofits. She was raised in a Jewish family in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She holds a BA in theatre arts/acting from Pennsylvania State University and an MS in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Her book is coming out April 11. The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done: One Juror’s Reckoning with Racial Injustice is Carol Menaker’s intimate and eye-opening account of her twenty-one-day jury sequestration in the 1976 murder trial of a young Black revolutionary charged with the murders of two white Philadelphia prison wardens. More than forty years after Menaker voted to convict Frederick Burton of murder, she tells a devastating story of uncovering how her naiveté and white privilege may have led her to convict a man whose shoes she never could have walked in. Compiled from historical research and Menaker’s recollections of growing up and coming of age in a predominantly white world, this memoir spells out the fundamental flaws in our criminal justice system and proclaims one juror’s moral imperative to help set things right—nearly a half-century later. carolmenaker.com