Charlie Chans Poppa Earl Derr Biggers

Barbara Gregorich was first published at the age of eleven. That's when she knew she would become a writer. This already put her six years behind Earl Derr Biggers, who reached the same conclusion at the age of five. But it wasn't until she reached the age of sixteen that she learned about the Warren, Ohio, author who created Charlie Chan. Not the stereotyped Chan that Hollywood created, but a more complex, more interesting Chan.

Gregorich has read each of the six Chan novels four times, and each time she sees something different in them: something deeper and more complex. Which is not only why she keeps reading them, but also why she wrote Charlie Chan's Poppa: Earl Derr Biggers.

Equally at home with fiction and nonfiction, Gregorich was first published as a novelist, with the well-received, She's on First. This story of the first female major leaguer was praised by Publishers Weekly, which wrote that "all baseball fans will appreciate Gregorich's sure feel for the game . . . ."

After writing the fictional version of women in baseball, Gregorich began the long job of researching the true story of women who played hardball. The result of that research was Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, published by Harcourt, 1993. Women at Play won the SABR-Macmillan Award for Best Baseball Research of the Year. In 2013 Women at Play was included in Ron Kaplan's 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die. In 2017 Francis Ford Coppola, when asked by The New York Times Book Review which book readers would be surprised to find on his shelf, replied: "Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball," by Barbara Gregorich."

Gregorich also writes mystery fiction. Her novel Dirty Proof introduced Chicago private eye Frank Dragovic. Sound Proof is the sequel. In 2014 she published Guide to Writing the Mystery Novel: Lots of Examples, Plus Dead Bodies, based on her years of teaching writing skills and reading mystery novels.

Gregorich studied at Kent State University, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard. Before becoming a writer she worked as an English instructor, a typesetter and a letter carrier. She lives in Chicago with her husband, Phil Passen, who plays the hammered dulcimer.