Heidi Benson of the Chronicle pens an appreciation for the bestselling San Francisco author (The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less) who died of cancer this past week at age 61.
A technical writer, book editor, reviewer and poet, Ryan was also the author of the pithy prose for the long-running Chronicle cartoon T.O. Sylvester. But the work that brought her a popular audience was the memoir that critics called “unforgettable.”
“Prize Winner” told the story of Evelyn Ryan, a 1950s housewife with 10 children and a husband with a habit of drinking his paycheck. Her indomitable optimism and talent for writing advertising jingles kept her family afloat.
Read more here.
[via GhostWord]
Meet the authors of the California Authors Directory. Visit the directory to discover writers like Andrew Sean Greer, a San Francisco novelist whose latest book, 
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