But I Just Grew Out My Bangs!: A Cancer Tale

In this frank and witty memoir, Katya Lezin chronicles the way her world was turned upside down by an ovarian cancer diagnosis and the year of treatment that followed. Interweaving the e-mail updates she regularly sent out during her journey, newspaper columns she wrote for The Charlotte Observer, and her own candid reflections on her experience, Lezin highlights the many physical hardships and indignities she suffered as a result of her surgeries, treatment and recovery, and the emotional toll this battle took on her and her loved ones. But Lezin's Ovarian Odyssey is ultimately an uplifting account of the many triumphs she experienced along the way, and serves as a tribute to the power of love, friendship, humor and the indefatigable human spirit.

Katya Lezin lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband and three children (Noah, Hannah and Eliza) and two dogs, all of whom provide plenty of fodder for her writing. With the exception of her first book, a nonfiction profile of six individuals sentenced to death (FINDING LIFE ON DEATH ROW, Northeastern University Press), Lezin often mines her own life for her books, both fiction and nonfiction, and for her weekly columns for The Charlotte Observer. Her involvement in the competitive Scrabble circuit is reflected in her young adult novel (KNIGHT SWAM), but her most personal manuscript to date is BUT I JUST GREW OUT MY BANGS! A Cancer Tale, in which Lezin chronicles her battle with ovarian cancer. A self-described "recovering attorney," Lezin now juggles a small catering business, a consulting business as a college admissions advisor (www.perfectfitcollege.com), freelance writing, and lots of unpaid chauffeuring gigs. Past jobs include teaching law, representing indigent clients as a guardian ad litem, serving as a career counselor at a law school, and - this is stretching pretty far back, but it's a distinction few can claim - serving as the Director of the U.S. Pavilion at the International Trade Fair in Kinshasa, Zaire. Growing up as a Foreign Service Brat, Lezin has lived all over the world and laments the fact that her traveling is now confined to distances her family minivan can cover. She is fluent in French, barely conversational in German and she can still sing a song in Urdu that she learned while making chapattis with her chokidar's family in Pakistan. When she is not on the tennis court or competing in a Scrabble tournament (two of her passions, which her husband would argue border on obsessions), she enjoys cooking, exercising and spending time with her family (both furry members and not).