ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For more than thirty years, Lori Vollandt worked with young people navigating hardship, resilience, injustice, and hope. Teaching in Downtown Los Angeles exposed her to stories from every corner of society and gave her a front-row seat to both the harm people can inflict and the remarkable strength people can find in the face of adversity. Those experiences shaped her belief that while resilience matters, no one should be expected to overcome what should never have happened in the first place.

 

After earning both her Master's and Doctorate in Education from UCLA, Lori moved into district leadership, where her work focused on violence prevention, healthy relationships, social-emotional well-being, equity, and social justice. She participated in congressional briefings, contributed to local and national policy initiatives, served on the board of Peace Over Violence, collaborated with the FBI on trafficking issues in Los Angeles, and helped secure funding to establish medical and mental health services for vulnerable students.

 

Those experiences continue to shape her fiction. Her novels explore power, accountability, institutional failure, and the ways survivors are often blamed for harms they did not cause. Through the interconnected novels of the Circle series, she examines what happens when systems fail, when silence protects the powerful, and when ordinary people decide to fight back.