Lori Closter is a wife, mom, grammy, and lifelong writer and horse lover who is fulfilling her dream of giving people hope and faith through stories. A native New Yorker with degrees from Cornell (BA) and Temple Universities (MA), she served as writer/assistant producer on various projects, including an educational film series for National Geographic, and even spent a summer working for renowned producer Joseph E. Levine. Her short stories have been published in several places and her unpublished collection, Riding the Elephant, was a contest semi-finalist.

Lori’s Young Adult, faith-based novel Topping the Willow and its accompanying screenplay, BREAKING JOY, have also been multiply recognized, including IAN Book of the Year finalist and Kairos Prize finalist, respectively.  In 2025, everything came together for the movie to move forward: BREAKING JOY won Best Script at Purpose Fest in Indiana, where Lori connected with former CHOSEN producer Justen Overlander, who became her co-writer in streamlining and then producing the screenplay. With veteran “teen girl” movie producer Alexandra Boylan of The Boylan Sisters as director, the movie was just filmed on a beautiful estate in Columbus, Georgia, and is now in post-production.

Lori and her retired pastor husband now live in coastal NC, where they enjoy small boating and she is already working on the sequel—again, as both novel and screenplay! It’s so hard to pick just one…

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