One teacher changed Andrea Auten’s life. Corny as it sounds, she was a struggling student before learning caught fire. Mr. Bell, her 9^th grade English teacher pulled her aside and said, “You are an exceptional writer. Your grades don’t reflect it, but your words do.” He was willing to stick his neck out and recommend she be placed in the high school’s coveted advanced English track. “Don’t let me down.” he said. Once learning was ignited, the pursuit of knowledge became lifelong. That next year, Auten became an A student and maintained honors standing throughout her college degrees. She believes when a student is seen, finds their voice, becomes an integrated member of a classroom, the future is impacted.

Andrea Auten is an arts professional: a vocalist, stage performer, visual artist, and arts outreach coordinator. Alongside these specializations, she writes and teaches, using multi-disciplinary arts approaches to explore language.

She is a recipient of the Eloise Klein Healy Academic Scholarship and the Marylyn Ross Rockefeller and James S. Rockefeller Jr. Writing Scholarship. Her writing has appeared in Lady/Liberty/Lit, Lunch Ticket, The Antioch Voice and is forthcoming in Made in LA’s third anthology. A member of the Degenerate Writer’s Group, she is working on a novel and a short story collection. MFA alum, Mireya Vela recently described Auten as: a “lighter of all dark places. Goddess of all that is good…like cupcakes. That’s it, Goddess of Cupcakes.”

Auten is a writing specialist in Antioch’s Teaching and Learning Center. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, a fellow educator, their sons, and beloved writing partner, Dusky, the family cat.