Miner, Erica: - Formerly a Metropolitan Opera Orchestra violinist for 21 years, Erica Miner now enjoys a multi-faceted career as an award-winning author, lecturer, screenwriter, and arts journalist. Erica's debut novel, Travels with my Lovers, won the Fiction Prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards, and her screenplays have won awards in the Santa Fe, WinFemme and Writer's Digest competitions. Erica's passion for Bringing Murder and Music together is embodied in her 3-part Opera Mystery novel series, now being re-published by Level Best Books, starting with Aria for Murder at New York's Metropolitan Opera. Drawing on Erica's own real-life experiences working at the Met with Maestro Leonard Bernstein and other superstars of the music world, Erica's young violinist sleuth, Julia Kogan, investigates high-profile murder and mayhem behind the Met's Golden Curtain. The series continues with the second and third novels taking place at the Santa Fe and San Francisco Opera. Now based in the Pacific Northwest, Erica also is a top speaker and lecturer. In the music world, she has presented pre-concert lectures for the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall; Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of California San Diego and the University of Washington; the Creative Retirement Institute at Edmonds College in the greater Seattle area; and Wagner Societies in Boston, New York, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, North Carolina, and New South Wales (Sydney, Australia). As a writer, Erica has given workshops for Sisters in Crime; Los Angles Creative Writing Conference; EPIC Group Writers; Write on the Sound; Fields End Writer's Community; Savvy Authors; and numerous libraries on the west coast.