Denise Griffitts Interviews Lynn Rankin-Esquer

Dr. Lynn Rankin-Esquer is an award winning researcher, psychologist and author. Her Young Adult book “My Paperback Cape: The Unlikely Odyssey of a Bookworm” was a 2014 Finalist in the San Francisco Writers Conference Contest. In addition to writing fiction, Lynn is the author of numerous academic journal articles and book chapters in the area of intimate relationships.

Lynn has degrees from Bucknell University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine and was on the faculty of Pepperdine University for four years.

A fascination with why people do what they do, coupled with a lifelong love of reading, led Lynn to her current career as an author.  Her current Young Adult book was written as a sort of support letter to her teenage self and all the other teenage girls who are longing for direction but not getting it from the adults around them.  Her clinical practice focused on working with anxiety disorders, depression, and intimate relationships.

Lynn has been a runner (‘slogger’ as she puts it) for over thirty years and attributes her sanity to those miles on the trails.  She loves sports, which comes in handy watching not just her children’s baseball, basketball, football, and soccer games, but also the UC Berkeley baseball team (husband David Esquer is the head coach).