Laura Mazzuca Toops is a Chicago-based writer with more than 15 years of professional experience. Her writing, editing and reporting experience includes stints at Chicago's legendary City News Bureau, Crain Communications, freelance work for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and other local and national publications. She also worked for five years as a film critic for a Chicago monthly entertainment magazine. Her short fiction has been published in several local little magazines, and she has studied at writing workshops at the University of Chicago. Her nonfiction book, A Native's Guide to Chicago's Western Suburbs, was published in August 1999 by Lake Claremont Press. She currently teaches journalism at Columbia College Chicago, where she earned a BA in journalism in 1986.

You can email Laura at LMazzToops@aol.com.