Diane Ayres is not like the other girls. After attending a women's college in the mid-70s, she was largely preoccupied and seemingly content to write fiction for its own sake. Then in 1998 her work was discovered by a distinguished New York editor whose enthusiasm set off a chain of events leading to the publication of her debut novel, OTHER GIRLS, in 2002. Ayres lives in Philadelphia, where she writes and teaches. She is working on two new novels, and periodically gives intensive fiction-writing seminars at the University of Pennsylvania's College of General Studies