BIOGRAPHY

     CJ Fosdick was hooked on writing after winning a Western Union Telegram Contest at age 10.   She became the Feature Editor of her High School paper in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at the same time working part time for a small area newspaper, writing a teen column.

     After moving to Rochester, MN., she wrote for the Post Bulletin as a freelancer, writing occasional book reviews, news, vacation, features, history and editorials through the years.  She won the Post Bulletin's first short story contest with "Llama Bells," a story with "legs."   It was subsequently picked up for Seventeen Magazine, and two school textbooks.  She also wrote for many local magazines, and is currently a featured writer for  Rochester Women.  National Magazine credits include Writer's Digest, Woman's World, Listen, Seventeen, and Far West.  (See books and other Publications.)

     With two fellow writers, she won a grant and collaborated on writing and editing a Minnesota Anthology, Blossoms & Blizzards.  For Rochester's Sesquicentennial in 2004, she chaired and organized a Bookfair, inviting 50 local and national authors with a Rochester connection.  She also wrote and edited a catalog of Rochester writers from 1866, which contained photos, brief bios, contacts and works by 150 profiles.  The catalog contained books written about Rochester as well as works of local writers.
      She has been a featured speaker for various interest groups and judged writing contests, currently the Minnesota Magazine Publishers Awards (MMPA) for 2012.

    Her longest, most ambitious work to date is the historical fiction she has just completed, covering the American West from 1855 to 1876, a period that pretty much recognizes the start and finish of the Sioux Indian Wars.  It's a plot-driven saga that pits an unlikely couple against each other at first, weaving them into actual settings of historic events, interacting with actual historic characters.

     With her doting husband and "techinical adivisor," she has raised four children and numerous other animals, living on a woodsy 12-acre hill in Northwest Rochester since 1984.  During summers at The Funny Farm, she gives riding lessons on their six horses and has been an active leader in regional horse events.  Besides Writing, Riding and Reading, she dabbles in Quilting during those long Minnesota winters that keep Minnesota writers forever young--cryogenically speaking.