Ronda Simmons grew up in the frozen north of Minnesota in a mostly Scandinavian enclave north of the Twin Cities and south of the Iron Range. Despite her parent's efforts to get her involved in the family accounting business, she attended the University of Minnesota, Duluth and earned a BS in geology. Her senior year set records for wind chill, so she went south to Dallas, Texas where she earned a PhD in geology at Southern Methodist University studying clay mineral diagenesis. (Her children say that she studied dirt, which isn't wrong.) Her career took her to oil fields around the world until she decided to settle down with her husband and get a dog, which led to children and more dogs. Ronda lives in Fort Collins with her menagerie and is a freelance writer. She has been a member of NCW since 2013 and is one of the award-winning writers for The Writing Bug. Her first non-geologic book, The Potato Primer, will be published in September, 2021.
