Lorraine Collins

Before moving to Montana in 2012, Lorraine Collins had lived in five states and three foreign countries, saving for last the Last Best Place. As soon as she learned to read she wanted to be a writer and has been one all of her life, which is quite a while now.

A native of South Dakota, Lorraine graduated from Cornell College, Iowa, with a degree in English and French. She edited the campus weekly newspaper in her senior year. After graduation, she went to New York to be an Editorial Researcher for Time Magazine. This was excellent training in journalism but no women were allowed to actually write for Time magazine in those years, so, eventually, she left New York, returning to the west.

After teaching in a high school for a year and studying creative writing at Denver University, she married and spent several months over the next two years in western Canada. Living on the western edge of South Dakota for the next twenty years, she was a freelance writer contributing articles to national magazines on a variety of subjects, writing a humor column for a family magazine, and a book of humor titled, "What's a Place Like This Doing to a Nice Girl Like Me?"

She was also active in public life, being president of a school board and subsequently was Chairperson of the South Dakota Commission on the Status of Women.

When her husband's job took them to Singapore for three years, she continued freelancing for magazines and was assistant editor of a newspaper published by the American Association. When she subsequently lived in London for four years she wrote articles and humor pieces for newspapers and magazines there. She began writing mystery and suspense stories for publication in the U.S. Some of her stories were translated and published in Germany and Japan. She continued to publish in mystery magazines when she subsequently lived in Houston, TX when she returned to live in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Lorraine became a commentator on South Dakota Public Radio for several years and subsequently wrote a newspaper column for the Black Hills Pioneer newspaper for six years before moving to Billings, MT. She independently published her first mystery novel in September 2018 and is working on another.

Lorraine has been a member-owner since 2017.