Cynthia Broze writes both narrative nonfiction and literary fiction. Whether grounded in research or imagined through fiction, she is drawn to stories that illuminate the complexity of women. Her published nonfiction includes Aerial Nurse Corps of America (2023) and Nurses of Los Angeles, 2nd Ed. (2024), works that reflect her commitment to preserve overlooked stories. She is the author of a forthcoming literary women’s fiction novel.
Cynthia Broze is a master’s candidate in Creative Writing and Literature at Harvard University. She completed the Master Novel Writing Program at UCLA under the late great novelist Les Plesko and holds a Master of Science from the University of California, Long Beach.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Cynthia Broze worked as a nurse practitioner from 1992 to 2019. Earlier in her career, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro, the Philippines, from 1980 to 1982, where she focused on community health and leprosy education. Recognizing that the community lacked a school library, she established one by securing and shipping more than 10,000 books donated by libraries and schools around the world.
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Nurses of Los Angeles book presentation to Azusa Pacific University DNP students, February 23, 2025
Book Presentation in Bucyrus, Ohio. September 18, 2024
Article in the Bucyrus Telegram-Forum by Oksana Kotkina
May 28, 2024
“Lauretta Schimmoler wouldn’t be stopped,” Broze opens her 372-page narrative. “Airplanes fired her blood, and it didn’t cool.” Despite her passion for it, Schimmoler did not begin to fly until she was 28 when she took her first plane ride on a Waco 10 biplane owned by a Crestline Barnstormer. Afterward, flying became her life.
Broze’s book includes chapters on Schimmoler’s early years and the founding of Fort Bucyrus Airport, Aerial Nurse Corps of America (ANCOA), the changes brought to ANCOA by World War II, Leora Stroup’s biography, a chapter on nurse-pilots and flight nurses and more.
Stroup believed in the aerial nursing cause along with Schimmoler and began a group in Detroit. The two women, both from Ohio, met as members of the Ninety-Nines, a woman’s pilot group formed in 1928 with Amelia Earhart as their president.
For her research, Broze visited Bucyrus where, Schimmoler’s archive is kept, as well as Texas where Stroup’s – the second character of the book, archive is kept, and Kansas, where Stroup built a nursing program in Fort Hays State University. Broze said she included Stroup in her research because she was both a nurse and a pilot, and took Schimmoler’s place as ANCOA president to appease the resistance from various nursing organizations on getting orders from a pilot, and not a nurse…
The University Archives and Special Collections thanks nurse-author Cynthia Broze for her personal quest to document the first BSN. It can be found in Chapter 8 of her book “Nurses of Los Angeles: Uncapping the Mystery” (Los Angeles: Semper Publishing, 2010).
The story behind the race to start California’s first nursing baccalaureate degree, By Victoria McCargar, University archivist, 09/11/2019 The Claim to BSN Fame
Working Nurse honored Cynthia Broze as a nurse who broke ground in her field.
Although she has been writing for years, the idea of a book was not foremost in Cynthia Broze’s mind. Rather, she had a question that no one seemed able to answer: “What was the first nursing school in Los Angeles?” Several schools or affiliated hospitals claimed the honor, but could anyone prove it? Visit Working Nurse magazine to read the full interview.
