Blanca Torres
Blanca Torres is a Mexicana from Washington State. She was born and raised grew up on the dry, eastern side of the state in the Tri-Cities. She started out writing for her hometown paper when she was fifteen years old, then wrote for numerous newspapers around the country. She left home to attend Vanderbilt University where she earned a B.A. in English and Latin American studies and learned the meaning of culture shock. She has worked as a reporter for several newspapers throughout the country covering local news, education, retail, consumerism, workplace and other business topics. Her work has appeared in the Tri-City Herald, DetroitNews, Kansas City Star, Contra Costa Times, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Seattle Times,Baltimore Sun, and the San Francisco Business Times, where she currently writes about commercial real estate and development. As a journalist, she has written about various topics including ranging from cat shows, shootings and community festivals to workplace issues, consumer spending, Fortune 500 companies and now commercial real estate. She earned a Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing with a concentration on fiction from Mills College in Oakland, Calif., and was the 2009 winner of the Marion Hood Boess Haworth Prize for Fiction for Children & Young Adults. In her spare time, she is working on a collection of short stories and a memoir about her mother’s childhood in Mexico.