About the Author

ROMY WYLLIE has an MA in English and History from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland (1955), a diploma in business and secretarial practices from St. Godric's College in London (1956); and a diploma in interior design from the Harrington Institute of Interior Design in Chicago (1974).

Romy started writing in her mid-sixties after a devastating wildfire destroyed fifty percent of the houses in her neighborhood. Realizing that all the materials she had been saving to recount the story of bringing up a child with Down syndrome would have been destroyed if her house had burned, she took a college writing class and started her first book. Although that book took eighteen years to reach publication, Wyllie has written two books on architecture: Caltech's Architectural Heritage: From Spanish Tile to Modern Stone published in 2000 by Balcony Press of Los Angeles; and Bertram Goodhue: His Life and Residential Architecture published in 2007 by W. W. Norton (New York and London). A monograph, Eva Maddox: Innovator, Designer, Educator has just been released (October 2017) by The Images Publishing Group, Australia. Excerpts from her book on Down syndrome have been published as opinion pieces in national newspapers.

Romy lives with her husband Peter, a professor emeritus of Geology, in Pasadena, California.