Dolores "Dolly" Sloan, 79, became a writer when she was an 8-year-old living in the Bronx.

"I wrote a play for my second-grade class — it was a thrilling experience," Sloan recalled.

It was around that same time Sloan's mother gave her a book about a little Spanish dancer and told her there was a possibility that her family had come from Spain. Unbeknownst to Sloan at the time, her mother's gift was to become the genesis of her newly published book, The Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal: Survival of an Imperiled Culture in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Sloan will hold a book signing from 5 to 6 p.m. Friday at Garcia Street Books.

Sloan moved to New Mexico in 1991 after she had visited a friend who was living here. "During that visit I became very excited and enthusiastic for the place," she said. "New Mexico's beauty and the multicultural environment spoke to me, and I knew that I belonged here."

Fortunately, Sloan's professional credentials as an educator and counselor came in handy when she went job hunting. Her first job was at Northern New Mexico College, where she worked as the coordinator of counseling services, a position that she held for two years. She then worked as a consultant for the state of New Mexico as the director of the Literary Arts Program for its Arts Division.

"That was an incredible experience," Sloan said. "We went to under-served communities around the state like the Mescalero Apache Reservation, the Navajo Nation in Shiprock and communities in Deming, Hobbs, Carlsbad, Mora and other parts of the state. These people didn't have access to professional writers, so we set up writing workshops where published authors from New Mexico could help them develop their own writing skills."

In the mid 1990s, Sloan also worked for the New Mexico Department of Health creating a variety of programs to deal with the problems of DWI offenders. Then in 1996, Sloan felt a need to get back into education and work on her writing, so she became the coordinator of peer counseling at Albuquerque High School. It was around this time that her mother's early words about a family connection to Spain began to resonate, as she met people in the state with Sephardic Jewish roots. Her travels to Spain reinforced her interest.

"I went to libraries and bookstores to see if I could find information on this subject, and discovered that there weren't any books of this type for the general reader," she recalled. "That's when I decided that I needed to do the research and author my own book. I wrote the preface to the book on a napkin while I was attending the Border Book Festival in Las Cruces."

Sloan's book was 10 years in the making. "I spent seven years doing the research and writing and the next three years finding a publisher," she said. In spite of some rejection letters from different publishers, Sloan's endeavor was a very enriching experience. "During my research and travels to Spain I was able to hold 16th-century documents in my hand," she said.

Sloan was born in 1930 in New York City and raised in the Bronx. She received her undergraduate degree in journalism and political science in 1951 from Syracuse University, and also holds two master's degrees in political science and psychology from universities in California. As a young professional and single parent, Sloan raised three children. In 1998, she moved to Los Angeles to be close to her children and two grandchildren. She currently teaches speech, writing and a course on Jewish women's history at St. Mary's College in Los Angeles.

Sloan returns to New Mexico every summer to keep up with her friends at PEN New Mexico, the state's affiliate of the largest international professional association of writers, editors and translators. She ahs been a member of the organization since 1993, and in 2006 received the PEN New Mexico Distinguished Service Award for her work with the group. Sloan's writing continues to be inspired by her experiences from 20 years ago working as the director of the literary program.

As the author recalled, "At one of the workshops in Deming, an 85-year-old woman came up to me and showed me her 20-year writing plan. It was then that I realized that it's never too late to be a writer."

Ana Pacheco is the founder and publisher of La Herencia, a culture and history magazine (www.herencia.com, 505-474-2800). Her weekly tribute to our community elders appears every Tuesday.