Lawrence Christon, a native New Yorker, is a former award-winning staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, specializing in cultural reportage and arts criticism. A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, he was one of 50 national and international writing instructors in Operation Homecoming, the NEA writing program that helped returning war veterans create their memoirs, now contained in the Library of Congress. The New Yorker called the group "among the fifty most distinguished historians, writers and journalists in the U.S." He is the author of Stepping Ahead, the Authorized History of South Coast Repertory.