About
I was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1955, the third of five children to Alex and Jean Zoumbaris. From a young age I dreamed of being a writer. My nose was constantly buried in a book as I read my way through every Nancy Drew mystery and horse story available to a young girl.
By the time I arrived as a freshman at Central Michigan University my focus had shifted to journalism. The 1970s were heady times for newspaper writers as Watergate gripped the nation and elevated reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to cult status. I joined the ranks of college students who dreamed of being dynamic investigative reporters digging up the next big story.
After several moves during college I followed the traditional career path for young journalists, bouncing between a small daily newspaper and a local radio station news team, working the police beat, writing obituaries and sitting through endless government meetings.
All that changed when my husband and I moved from California to Virginia. Although I remained captivated by research and writing, I set aside my typewriter and signed on with the regional library. It wasn’t long before personal computers arrived on the scene, the internet exploded and libraries were in the thick of the new information technology.
It was another move that pushed me to publish my first reference book with fellow writer Marjolijn Bijlefeld. After we tackled the topic of financial management skills for teens, we simply looked at what was important reading for our young adult audience and wrote to fill the gaps.
In my newest title with Greenwood Press, Health and Medical Issues Today: Nutrition, I look at controversies in nutrition and examine the pros and cons of everything from food irradiation and organics to genetically modified foods and food safety. With so much conflicting information streamed to consumers daily, I wanted to give young adults a tool to understand the realities of the food they eat, how it is grown, processed, treated and what that means for their overall nutrition. Thanks for visiting my website. I hope you enjoy my books.
- Sharon Zoumbaris
