Laura Goode is a poet, novelist, dramatist, essayist, feminist, educator, spelling bee kid, avid correspondent, dance party instigator, unicorn master, French fry enthusiast, amateur rapper, and warrior of the heart.
Laura was raised outside Minneapolis, received her BA in English and Comparative Literature and MFA in Writing from Columbia University in the City of New York, and now lives and writes in San Francisco. A dear friend once told her that if a Lifetime movie were ever made about her, it would be entitled “Laura Goode: Heart of Gold, Womb of Steel.” She is gangly, she is an only child, and she was one of the worst marchers in the entire history of the flute section of the Edina High School Marching Band. She loves talking to strangers.
Laura’s first feature film, FARAH GOES BANG, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2013. She co-wrote the film with Meera Menon, then produced it, because she’s kind of Type A like that. FGB follows three recent college graduates who go on the road in 2004 to campaign for John Kerry and get some play, and raised $81,160 on Kickstarter in 2012.
Laura’s first novel for young adults, Sister Mischief, was released by Candlewick Press on July 12, 2011. When asked to describe her young adult novel in casual conversation, she calls it “the world’s first interracial gay hip-hop love story for teens.” SM is the bomb-dropping, clam-jamming story of 17-year-old Esme Rockett, who loves hip-hop, bacon, swagger, women who drop the mic, and especially her beguiling Bengali co-MC, Rowie. About this, Vanity Fair’s Just My Type said: “Welcome to the Queer Hip-Hop Revolution.”
Laura is currently writing:
A) a bunch of poems, and you can read some of them here, here, and here,
B) another novel, a noir mystery, that concerns rapture, a dead bartender, a Diana Ross/Tina Turner tribute artist, the former Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn, and an iguana tattoo named Ralph,
C) some notes on her hands about sweet new words like “vellicate,” and “deliquesce” and “deviltry,”
D) an Indian-American film adaptation of Fiddler on The Roof,
E) an elegy in essays for her twenties, or
F) All of the above.