Bio

Award-winning author Amanda LaPera is an author, speaker, teacher, and mental health advocate. She has served on the Board of Directors for the National Alliance for Mental Illness, Orange County Affiliate (NAMI-OC) since 2009. 

Her creative works, including short stories and poetry, which often address mental illness, have been published in a variety of anthologies and websites. Her oil and acrylic paintings are usually of landscapes.

She lives in California where she teaches English, enjoys spending time with her supportive husband, children and dogs, and continues to write.

Amanda LaPera is available for professional speaking engagements on a variety of topics whether is be motivational, or related to mental illness and laws related to severe mental illness, mental illness from the perspective of a family member, individual, and advocate, as well as mental health in high schools.

Her first book LOSING DAD, Paranoid Schizophrenia: A Family's Search for Hope (Adamo Press, 2013), is the recipient of a Silver Award in the category of Psychology for the 26th annual IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.