Diana Rodriguez Wallach was working as a magazine writer at One Penn Plaza in New York City when the Sept. 11 terrorist attack took place. The incident made her re-examine her life, writes Kim Douglas for Main Line Today.
“You could smell the rubble and the death every time you were outside—and I decided I wanted to do more than essentially look at myself each day,” she said.
Wallach, who grew up in Delaware County, decided to move back to the Philadelphia area. She worked at a nonprofit for a while, “which was meaningful—until a dream about an entire series of books prompted me to write,” she said.
Now an established YA novelist, her seventh book. Small Town Monsters, was released in fall 2021.
Wallach read a lot of youth-oriented fiction growing up and drew on her own life for her earlier books.
Her first book, Amor and Summer Secrets, takes place on the Main Line but it’s based on her first-time visit to Puerto Rico “and coming to terms with being a white-passing Latinx, like my father,” Wallach said.
She’s working on a new book about the mysterious happenings at Bridgewater Triangle in Massachusetts
Read more at Main Line Today about YA novelist Diana Rodriguez Wallach.
