Leigh Michaels is the author of more than 100 books, including contemporary romance novels, historical romance novels, and non-fiction books. More than 35 million copies of her romance novels have been published. Six of her books have been finalists for Best Traditional Romance novel in the RITA contest sponsored by Romance Writers of America. She has received two Reviewer’s Choice awards from Romantic Times (RT Book Reviews).
Her work has been translated and published in 120 countries in more than 25 languages, including Japanese, Korean, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Czech, Bulgarian, Russian, Turkish, Hebrew, Greek, Swedish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Danish, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Africaans, Arabic, Indonesian, and Chinese.
She received the Johnson Brigham Award presented by the Iowa Library Association to an Iowa author for outstanding contributions to American literature.
She is the author of books for writers including Writing the Romance Novel, Creating Romantic Characters, and Writing Between the Sexes. She has produced audio programs and written magazine articles on subjects of interest to writers in general. She also writes local history books.
She teaches romance writing online at Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Men and women from around the world have participated in her workshops, and more than fifty of her students have gone on to publish their own romance novels with commercial publishers.
She wrote her first romance novel when she was a teenager and burned it, then wrote and burned five more complete manuscripts before submitting to a publisher. Her first submission was accepted and published by Harlequin Books, the first publisher to look at it.
Leigh is an award-winning author, a teacher, an editor, and a public speaker.
She serves as chair of the Advisory Council for the University of Iowa Libraries, and is a member of the board of the Ottumwa Public Library and of the Ottumwa Public Library Foundation.