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About the Authors
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Louis Sachar
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Based on the books by Louis Sachar
As a writer of books for elementary school students, Louis Sachar (pronounced SACK-er) always tries to remember what it felt like to be that age because he thinks that kids are basically the same now as they were when he was young. Sachar grew up right here in Orange County — Tustin, to be exact. While in college at U.C. Berkeley, Sachar discovered that he could earn college credit by becoming a teacher’s aide — no homework, no tests, no term papers. All he had to do was watch over a bunch of kids at Hillside Elementary School. So he became a Noontime Supervisor, also known as “Louis the Yard Teacher.” What became his favorite college class turned into a life-changing experience.
Sachar didn’t like any of the stories his students were reading, so he decided to try his hand at writing a children’s book of his own. Hillside Elementary became the inspiration for his first manuscript, Sideways Stories from Wayside School, and all the characters in that book are named after the kids he knew at Hillside. Sachar insists this book was the most fun for him to write because at the time, writing was still just a hobby. Much to his surprise, however, Sideways was accepted for publication during his first week in law school and although Sachar went on to earn his law degree and pass the bar exam, it was becoming clear that writing was his first career choice. By 1989, his books began selling well enough that he was finally able to stop lawyering and start writing full-time. Sachar has written more than 23 books, including Holes, for which he won both the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award.
Today, Sachar lives in Austin, Texas, with wife, Carla, daughter, Sherre, and dogs Lucky and Tippy. He loves them all, but only Lucky and Tippy are allowed to be in the office with him when he’s writing.
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John Olive
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Adapted by John Olive
A widely produced and award-winning playwright, a screenwriter, a novelist and essayist, John Olive is also a skilled and popular teacher.
John Olive has written many plays for young audiences, both adaptations and originals, including Jason and the Golden Fleece, The Magic Bicycle, Pharaoh Serket and the Lost Stone of Fire and Water Babies and Johnny Tremain, among others. Olive has written screen and teleplays for Amblin Entertainment, Disney, Embassy Television Lorimar, MGM/UA, ABC/Capital Cities, Columbia Pictures Television, and Lifetime Cable. He has also completed a collection of short stories about actors (An Actor Prepares) and a book about creating magical bedtime stories for young children called Tell Me a Story in the Dark. He also teaches a popular workshop on the subject.
His plays for adults include Standing On My Knees, The Voice of the Prairie, Killers, Evelyn and the Polka King, Minnesota Moon, Careless Love, Clara's Play and an adaptation of Henry James's The Aspern Papers. The Summer Moon won a 1997 Kennedy Center Award for New Plays and premiered September 1998 in Seattle. Greg Watanabe, who is in the cast of Sideways Stories, played the lead in The Summer Moon when we produced it here at SCR in 1999.
A founding member of the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, Olive has received fellowships from the Bush Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board and others. He has taught creative writing at the University of Washington and Carleton College, and he currently teaches screenwriting at the University of Minnesota. He resides in Minneapolis with his wife, Mary, and their son, Michael.
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