Sandra Whitten Plant has been writing articles and stories for many years. Her favorite creative writing form is the short story, a genre that requires keen observation and economy of words. She believes that each well-written short story is like a precious jewel. She has written articles for magazines and newspapers for many years. Her work of both fiction and nonfiction has been published in anthologies, but Sweet Adversity is her first book. She has taught creative writing in schools and workshops since 1975. For the past five years, she has led a workshop called Telling Your Story in a community-based program called Joy in Learning in Nashville, Tennessee. Sandra Whitten Plant was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1941, and moved with her family to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at the age of nine. She studied at the University of Georgia and at the University of Tennessee. She has a B.S. degree in journalism. Plant completed her graduate work at the University of Tennessee. After a thirty-four-year career in public and community relations, she retired in 2007 from Bechtel National, Inc. She is a resident of Nashville, Tennessee.