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Mark Wiederanders writes historical fiction about the private lives of famous authors who were geniuses as well as jerks. Each of his carefully researched screenplays and novels deals with a life-or-death crisis that the main character faces -- sometimes successfully, other times disastrously -- and how the result shaped the stories they wrote. His fictional subjects, so far, include William Shakespeare, Jack London, and Robert Louis Stevenson.
A native of San Francisco, Mark majored in psychology and literature as an undergraduate, then earned a Ph.D in psychology at the University of Colorado. After being Assistant Professor of Psychology at a University of Wisconsin campus, he settled with his wife and young family in Sacramento, where he researched violence, sociopaths, and the criminally insane for California state government. At nights he began writing fiction as a break from the dire situations of his work clientele. With his youngest daughter, Annie, he co-wrote a children's story, The Dinosaur Egg, that placed First in a Friends of the Library Competition. A few years later, his screenplay about William Shakespeare's youngest daughter was a top-ten finalist in the Academy of Motion Pictures' Nichol Fellowship competition, and was optioned to a Hollywood film producer.
Mark is an alumnus of the Community of Writers Workshops, was a scholar at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, and earned residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the New York Mills Cultural Center, and the Martha's Vineyard Writers' Residency. He belongs to the Historical Novel Society and currently serves as president of the Sacramento-area chapter.