I majored in journalism at MIchigan State University both because I wanted to be a journalist and because I could take more literature courses with that major than I could with an English major.  I got to spend the summer after freshman year at Harvard Summer School, where I had two amazing English poetry classes and where I got so many credtis transferred back to MSU that I was able to graduate college in three years by going to school the following two summers.

The whole time I was at MSU I worked on the States News, the college's award-winning five-day-a-week newspaper.  It's here I met my husband and started on the path that led me, in the spring of 1970 during the Vietnam War, to be a new Mrs. Lieuteuant -- the experiences of which form the source of my novel MRS. LIEUTENEANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL.

I continued to read extensively and, in 1972, when I became a journalist in Philadelphia and a member of a women's consciousness-raising group, two books particularly influenced me:  Doris Lessing's "The Golden Notebook" and Erica Jong's "Fear of Flying."  I also taught newswriting and copyediting at Temple University in Philadelphia.

In 1980, right after earning an M.B.A. from The Wharton School, I moved with my husband to Los Angeles.  A few years later I founded the Los Angeles Chapter of Sisters in Crime.

My current reading is eclectic -- both fiction and nonfiction -- and usually several books at once so that I have different books on hand for whatever mood I'm in at the moment.  My husband, my two adult daughters, and I are all constantly buying books.  I figure I must be one of Amazon's best customers!

Caption for above photo:

Phyllis Zimbler and Mitchell Miller at the Coronation Ball at Michigan State University on Saturday, November 18, 1967, sponsored by the Cadet Officers Club and the Arnold Air Society.