Ron Koertge

A faculty member for more than 35 years at Pasadena City College, where he has taught everything from Shakespeare to remedial writing, Ron Koertge is the author of several acclaimed novels, most of them for young adults. In addition to his young adult novels, Ron Koertge writes poetry, and has been dubbed “the wisest, most entertaining wiseguy in American poetry” by poet-laureate Billy Collins. Ron Koertge grew up in an agricultural area in an old mining town in Illinois, just across the Mississippi from St. Louis, Missouri. There he learned to “drive a tractor and buck hay bales, which are clearly useful skills in Los Angeles,” he quips. He and his wife live in South Pasadena, California. His books include “Stoner and Spaz”, “Where the Kissing Never Stops”, “Margaux with a X” and “The Arizona Kid”.