Maria Dahvana Headley
She grew up in rural Idaho on a survivalist sled-dog ranch, spent part of her teens sewing Shakespearean corsets in a costume shop, part of her 20's in the maritime industry dealing with ships, pirates, and the search for Amelia Earhart's plane, and now lives in Brooklyn in an apartment shared with a seven-foot-long stuffed crocodile, and a heap of French anatomical charts from the 1950's.
Author's Comment: My life was changed by the books I read when I was a kid and teenager. I basically spent all of my time sitting in the top of a tree, reading everything I could find, so once I had an idea for this book, I knew I could write a wild-eyed fantasy for younger readers, and those were the things that made me a writer. I was already beginning work on this when I started working on Unnatural Creatures with Neil [Gaiman], and doing that book inspired me even more. There’s so much wonderful kid and teen literature out there, and Neil and I both like things that tilt out of the normal universe and into the world of weirdness, so I got to read some things that really inspired me as we were working.
Nationality: American