aurie Scott-Reyes spent most of her childhood on her grandparents' Alabama farm. Her home was Crawford, the western rural fringe of Phenix City, a town once named Sodom.

Laurie Scott-Reyes was born into a U.S. Army family in Frankfurt, Germany. Although she spent her early yars in Alabama, she moved with her family to Indianapolis during her junior year in high school. She attended Crispus Attucks High School where she learned the crafts of sewing and fashion design. After graduation she worked as an alterations tailor in a men's clothing store in Indianapolis and eventually moved to Atlanta where she attended the Art Institute of Atlanta and majored in fashion design while working part-time as a model.

Bored and dissatisfied, Laurie Scott-Reyes quit the institute during her final semester and joined the U.S. Army as a photojournalist and illustrator.

Over a twenty-two year span, she was stationed at Fort hamilton, N.Y; the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hi; Fort Eustis and Fort Belvoir, Va., the Pentagon, the 193rd Infantry and the Southern Command, Republic of Panama; Fort Sill, Ok.; and Fort McPherson, Ga. During a two-year break from journalism, she spent two years working as an Army intelligence writer and analyst in the U.S. Embassy in Managua, Nicaragua. Journalism assignments took her to Korea, Peru, Honduras, Bolivia, Belize and El Salvador during the civil war there.

In 1997 she was promoted to the Army's highest enlisted rank of sergeant major and subsequently attended the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy in El Paso, Texas where she was among twenty-nine women in a class of 460 soldiers. There she met and married Sergeant Major Israel Reyes-Rodriguez of La Perla, Puerto Rico.

Laurie Scott-Reyes retired at Fort McPherson, Ga. in June 2000 after 22 years of service. She is currently a full-time independent writer and artist.

She holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing degree from Vermont College, Montpelier, Vt.