Straus, Celia: - Celia Straus is an award winning author of books, television and film scripts. She has written hundreds of shows for television and film throughout my career, and most recently, received an Emmy nomination for Kids Speak Out, a Youtube series created in partnership with the United Nations that features conversations with children worldwide about their lives. Her work has earned Cine Golden Eagles and industrial film festival gold and silver awards, as she has served as a script-writer for numerous networks including Discovery, History Channel, and PBS. From 2012 to 2017, Celia created and wrote the Emmy Award Winning Memorial Day Concert that was broadcast nationally on PBS. She also had the honor of creating and writing the Anti-Defamation League's Concert Against Hate, which was performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for several years.​ In addition to her television and film work, she has authored several books on different topics, including a poetry trilogy for middle school girls and the national bestseller Prayers On My Pillow, (Ballantine Books, 1998). On military topics, she has written the books Hidden Battles on Unseen Fronts: Stories of American Soldiers with PTSD and TBI, (Casemate, 2009), and Pathfinder Pioneer: The Memoir of a WWII Bomber Pilot, (Casemate in 2017). Celia's passion for storytelling extends to children's literature, and she is currently concentrating on collaborating with various illustrators to create children's picture books, such as the three BoBo and Iris books about an orphaned baby elephant in Kenya, Livy Little Honey Bee, and Sophie, the Monarch Butterfly, Mission to Mexico. Celia currently resides in Washington, D.C. but travels frequently to see her two daughters and gorgeous grandchildren, who are the apple of her eye.