The Devil Takes Half (42 page)

While in college, Leta worked at the
Washington Post
, writing obituaries and doing research for the national desk. She left to join the staff of the
Los Angeles Times
Washington Bureau. Following her marriage to a Greek national, Philip Serafim, Leta moved to Athens, where she taught art at home while raising her daughters, Amalia and Annie.

When Leta moved back to the United States seven years later, she wrote for the local papers and sporadically for the
Boston Globe
. Her mother began to lose her sight from glaucoma around this time, and disturbed by her plight, Leta went to work as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Society of Eye Physicians and Surgeons. Determined to educate the public about this disease, she designed and launched multiple media campaigns: posters on public transportation, billboards throughout the city, radio and television announcements, cable shows, etc. She received many awards for this program and served in a similar capacity as Public Health Director for the New England Ophthalmological Society, the oldest specialty organization in the United States.

Leta spends at least one month every year in Greece and has visited over twenty-five islands. She paints in both oils and acrylics, etches, cooks—she's mastered many native cuisines, but her main focus is Greek—and volunteers on a weekly basis as a tutor in an MIT-sponsored ESL program.

The Devil Takes Half
is her first novel, and the first book in the Greek Islands Mystery series. Coffeetown Press will also be publishing her work of historical fiction,
To Look on Death No More
.

You can find her online at www.letaserafim.com.