Lisa Gruwell Spicer:  

You would remember me as Lisa Gruwell. I was a Mendocino Mustang at the elementary school and then a Cardinal, but left Mendocino High after 10th grade to attend University High School in LA. It was tough making friends there, the cliques were already established. I spent the second half of my senior year in Villeueuve-sur-Lot, France. I attended a lycee (high school) and lived with a French family (Laur). I went to college, majoring in Theatre at WU Green Bay, than transfered to UC Santa Cruz, then took a break and traveled for a few years, returning to Seattle, where I was born, and where I still have family and ancestral karma! I majored in Communications/Broadcast Journalism at University of Washington, and after 6 years of college spread out over the 1980s, finally got my BA. I've been based in the Seattle area much of my adult life, where the Gruwell family is originally from. After college I worked at KCTS, Seattle's PBS affiliate, working in the documentary production unit, and then on the Bill Nye the Science Guy show. During 1992-1994 I was living on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. I worked as a development director (grant writing, fund raising) for a community organizing group called Native Action. That was an amazing, life-changing experience, and I have since written a screenplay about it. Entering it into a few festivals to see what might happen... I was married to R. Spicer in the mid 1990s. He is an avid mountain climber and loves the outdoors, so we spent a lot of time camping and climbing mountains along the north cascades. I summited Mount Baker in 1997; while I am proud of that feat, it was soooo hard. I usually just stayed at base camp while the other climbers got up at midnight to start their ascent. I'd melt snow for water and write in the tent. It was during this time that I wrote the screenplay abo...Expand for more