Celina Lawrence

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Celina writes realistic literary fiction based on her own life experiences and the impoverished community she grew up in.

​In kindergarten Celina decided she wanted to be a teacher, then in elementary school refined it to wanting to be a 5th grade teacher. To prepare for this she became a peer assistant in 7th grade, giving private in-class instruction to students who were failing. A few months later she began as a one-on-one reading tutor and was installed as regional representatives for both Al-Anon and Choice — a support group for adolescent girls. In 8th grade Celina began running a homework-help classroom at the middle school she attended. She ran that classroom for five years with no aide. In 9th grade, she founded and was the facilitator of the Al-Anon group at her high school. Later that year, she became a STARS educator teaching abstinence curriculum at a local middle school for two years.

When she was nineteen she gave birth to her son. When her son was 11 months old she got a unit from a government housing program. They lived off of up to $500 a month plus food stamps for eighteen years. For many months on end, she had no income at all. When she was twenty-one she began taking courses at a community college for a degree in business administration. While going to school, Celina was a volunteer teacher’s aide in a Head Start classroom for two years.

Through a government program she got a job at a women's shelter, helping those in situations of domestic violence. After that program reached its time limit, she worked at various 'dead-end jobs' for several years. Celina made ends meet for her and her son but was not satisfied. Thus, went back to her dream of becoming an educator.

She took a position at another nonprofit helping clients in situations of homelessness and food insecurity. From there she went to a third nonprofit where she ran various food distribution sites, being eligible for those programs herself. It was here that she got her first taste of being an educator. At this third nonprofit, she designed and taught health-based seminars and workshops for residents of low-income housing properties. She taught some of these classes in the community room at the complex where she lived with her son. Alongside the grant-based positions she held, Celina homeschooled her son for over ten years.

What got her through was keeping her future in mind of selling her books and having her own holistic practice. It is her belief that through her books she will fulfill her dream by educating her readers on the lessons she learned through life. Her books are fictionalized accounts of her own life. They are a way to reach the masses, giving readers hope and resources for improving their own impoverished situations. There is nothing in her first series that she has not been through herself. Celina has been Mark, Kelly, Mr. Garrison, and has lived in Cedar, Utah: The small sub-communities of low-income housing in a larger world that doesn't understand.

It is her desire that you learn a little for reading her books and share the wisdom within them with others.