Joan Lowery Nixon
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Joan Lowery Nixon (February 3, 1927 – June 28, 2003) was an American journalist and author, specializing in historical fiction and mysteries for children and young adults.
Biography
Joan Lowery was born on February 3, 1927, in Los Angeles, California. In 1947, she received a degree in journalism from the University of Southern California. At USC, she met her husband, Hershell, a United States Navy officer and a geologist. At USC she was a member of Kappa Delta sorority.<ref name=KappaD>Template:Cite web</ref> She taught school in Los Angeles<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> before starting her family. In 1964 her first book for children, The Mystery of Hurricane Castle, was published.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Her son, Joe Nixon, is a Houston lawyer, who was from 1995 to 2007 a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives from District 133 in Houston.<ref name=HoustonChronObit/> Nixon, her husband, and their children lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, before finally settling in the Memorial and Tanglewood area of Houston, Texas. She died of pancreatic cancer in Houston on June 28, 2003.<ref name=HoustonChronObit>Template:Cite news</ref>
Work
Nixon wrote more than 140 books,<ref name=HoustonChronObit/> including The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore (1979). She co-authored several science books with her geologist husband Hershell Nixon.
Nixon was the only author to win four Edgar Allan Poe Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, and had five additional nominations.<ref name=HoustonChronObit/> She won the California Young Reader Medal of the California Library Association twice. She also won the Western Writers of America's Golden Spur Award twice, and received the Texas Institute of Letters Award. Her book Land of Hope is used in some middle schools.
Her novel The Other Side of Dark was made into the 1995 TV movie Awake To Danger, starring Tori Spelling and Michael Gross.
References
External links
- Short autobiography at Scholastic Teachers
- Joan Lowery Nixon Collection at University of Minnesota CLRC, with biographical sketch
- Template:LCAuth
- 1927 births
- 2003 deaths
- American children's writers
- 20th-century American women journalists
- American mystery writers
- Edgar Award winners
- Writers from Houston
- Writers from Los Angeles
- USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism alumni
- Deaths from pancreatic cancer in Texas
- 20th-century American novelists
- 20th-century American women novelists
- American women mystery writers
- Journalists from Texas
- Novelists from Texas
- 20th-century American non-fiction writers
- 20th-century American journalists
- 21st-century American women