PENNY FLETCHER

In 1979, after leaving Tennessee and an abusive marriage, Penny Fletcher loaded her three young children, $300, and everything they owned into a 12-year-old rust-bucket Ford and headed for a friend’s house in Florida. For a while, she survived like she had all during her abusive marriage, by running 24-hour convenience stores, motel offices, and driving a delivery truck. Still, she continued to write fiction and nonfiction as a freelancer for a variety of national magazines, including True Story, True Romance, Gulf Coast Fisherman, and Today’s Christian Woman.

When in the late 1980s, her late husband, Robert Fletcher, encouraged her to follow her dream of writing full time, she took a pay cut to hire on as a reporter for Sunbelt Newspapers in Tampa Bay, soon becoming a Bureau Editor for Sunbelt and a columnist for The Tampa Tribune. During her 35 years of reporting in the Tampa Bay area, she has won more than 30 writing awards as a journalist, columnist, and magazine freelancer.

These accolades include four First Place State-Wide Awards for columns and news writing, and two Writer’s Digest contest fiction awards. She has also taught Creative Writing at The Center 4 Lifelong Learning in Sun City Center, Florida, and edited and coached more than 300 books for aspiring authors.

Penny is currently credentialed by the Florida Freelance Writers Association and The Florida Writers-Editors Network, and is known for her social justice activities—especially helping abused women and children.