SANDS HALL is an author, a director, a teacher, an editor, an actor, and while she is a bit diffident about calling herself a musician, she does love music and writes songs and performs with friends whenever she can.
She is the author of the novel Catching Heaven (Ballantine), a Random House Reader’s Circle Selection and a Willa Award Finalist for Best Contemporary Fiction. Her plays include an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which recently enjoyed its tenth production, and the comic/drama Fair Use, which explores the “was it plagiarism?” controversy surrounding Wallace Stegner’s novel, Angle of Repose. Sands’ directing experience runs the gamut from Shakespeare to Giradoux to new works by new playwrights, and her acting resume is long and varied. She is also the author of a book of writing essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. A popular teacher, she leads workshops at the University of California, Davis, Extension Program and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, among others.
Sands was born in La Jolla, California, and spent in childhood in Squaw Valley, in the Sierra Nevada. She received her BA in Drama from the University of California, and attended the American Conservatory Theatre’s Advanced Training Program in San Francisco. She spent four years in New York City, and ten in Los Angeles, performing in theatres large and small, on the soap opera The Guiding Light, various guest starring roles on television, roles in various films, and—galumphing through the usual hodgepodge of odd jobs that artists use to support themselves—gathering grist for her writer mill.
To that end she eventually headed back to school, earning her MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop and a second MFA in Theatre Arts, also from the University of Iowa.
She currently lives in the historic mining town of Nevada City, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. She feels fortunate to be among the Affiliate Artists that work with The Foothill Theatre Company. She is also a member of Synthetic Unlimited, and often directs productions for the Center for the Arts in Grass Valley. She attempts to grow roses, with mixed success, as tall pines and madrones will insist on casting shade, and every summer manages to harvest a few tomatoes and Japanese eggplant from her plants; the deer get the rest.
Sands' cats Oona and Lucy.
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