Greg Koren graduated from Towson University in 1988 with a
Bachelor of Science degree in English and a concentration in writing. That same
year, he began working as a newspaper reporter and columnist in Maryland, first
as Associate Editor of the weekly East Baltimore Guide, then, in 1993, as
Senior Features Writer for the daily Carroll County Times. During his
fifteen-year career, he won more than a dozen awards for his writing, among
them the Maryland State Teachers Association’s School Bell Award for excellence
in education reporting, the Associated Press’ Mark Twain Award for outstanding
features writing, and six awards, including three first-place, from the MDDC
Press Association for feature and column writing.
His one-act play, An Arrangement of Convenience, about the
difficult subject of AIDS, won the Maryland Playwrights Festival, and in 1989 was
produced by the Vagabond Theater in Baltimore to rave reviews.
In 1998, Greg and his wife traded places, and he became the
at-home parent. A year later, while writing a weekly column for the Carroll
County Times on his experiences as an at-home dad, he decided to homeschool his
two kids, making him one of only three homeschooling fathers in Baltimore
County.
Greg always loved reading aloud to Max and Mara, and those
homeschooling years introduced him to the enchanting world of children’s fiction.
He was immediately taken with the powerful storytelling being written for middle
school-grade readers and decided he wanted to try his hand at it. His first MG
novel, Do Over, was published in 2016. The Memory Trap is his second.