Iris Bancroft (1922–2003)

Iris Bancroft was born in Hubei Province, China, to Christian missionaries. The family left the country when she was about 18 months old, and her father died shortly afterwards. Her mother brought her to Chicago, where Iris dreamed of becoming a choir director. In 1945, during World War II, she got married, and her husband enlisted in the U.S. Navy. After his return, the couple had two sons and then divorced in 1961. Iris remarried to Keith Bancroft, taught school, and also sold insurance with her second husband. In 1963, the couple moved to California to work as photographers and writers, and later as editors, for nudist magazines. In 1977, she quit her job to become a full-time fiction writer. She published seven historical romance novels, using the pen names Iris Brent and Andrea Layton as well as her own. Iris also painted and made erotic clay statues in the 1960s. She played the viola in the Burbank Symphony Orchestra and the La Mirada Symphony Orchestra, two community orchestras that accepted non-professional musicians. She also sang regularly in the choir at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church in Mission Hills.