Alice Anna Reese writes fiction and nonfiction for children, is an animal scientist, and has

taught elementary school.

 

My essay on Helen Stephens, “Fulton’s Fleetest Feet,” won first prize in the essay division of

the One Hundred Years Writing Contest of the Daniel Boone Regional Library. A couple of my

stories won Prince Edward Island’s (Canada) Lucy Maud Montgomery Awards for Children’s

Literature. Recently, Heinrich Leonhard and I put together a book of famous Missourians that

appears on this website. I did the writing. Heinrich did the illustrated games.

 

I have poems and/or stories in Prince Edward Island’s blue SHIFT, Kindred Spirits, and Common

Ground magazines, and in the collections TWiG Anthology, TWiG Branches Out, The

Communication Bridge and The Communication Link. The monologue ‘Persimmon Pudding,’

about the disaster that was my wedding, was presented as part of Solo Works: an evening of

marvelously original monologues.

 

I am a founding member of The Writers in Group (TWiG), a writing and publishing cooperative

in Prince Edward Island. Currently, I am a member of the Columbia Branch of Missouri Writers’

Guild; Columbia Freelance Forum; and Write/Hear, Columbia’s branch of the Society of

Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) aka Scwibby. I am the newly designated

Published And Listed (PAL) coordinator for SCBWI Missouri. As PAL coordinator, it is my job

to see that Missouri’s published authors of children’s books sell a zillion copies and make a wad

of money.

 

I have a B.A. in English from U.C.L.A. and a Ph.D. in animal science from North Carolina State

University. I studied playwriting with David Marcia and David Crespy at the University of

Missouri. I was a substitute teacher in East L.A. (awful) and taught first and second grades in

Prince Edward Island, Canada (delightful). The Canadians have a different version of the War of

1812. I just teach. I never argue. I currently volunteer in the art room at Lee Elementary School

in Columbia, Missouri. For a couple of years I was a mentor with Stand By Me for Columbia

Public Schools and I’ve also volunteered with challenged adults at Douglass School.

 

While making clothes for commercials in Hollywood, I acted in some free theater and made a

dozen films. I was either raped or killed or both in all of them. Is that type casting? While living

in Venice (California), Garst Reese moved in next door. He wanted to go to Africa, so I married

him and got a Ph.D. in animal science. Over the years, I’ve done research in ruminant nutrition

in Mexico, Indonesia, and Mali (West Africa). While working in Indonesia, I taught my

coworkers conversational English. In Mali, where researchers speak French, I taught them

English for writing scientific papers.

 

I am a docent at the Museum of Art and Archaeology, edit the newsletter for the Columbia

branch of the American Association of University Women, am on the judging team for the Jackie

White Memorial Playwriting Contest, and feed and water two dogs, two egg-laying hens and one

disheveled husband.