Ruth Manning-Sanders, youngest daughter of an English minister, describes her childhood as “extraordinarily happy. . . with kind and understanding parents and any amount of freedom.” She read omnivoro…
Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts …
Born Dorothy Gladys Smith in Lancashire, England, Dodie Smith was raised in Manchester (her memoir is titled A Childhood in Manchester). She was just an infant when her father died, and she grew up fa…
Arthur C. Brooks, PhD, is a social scientist and one of the world’s leading authorities on human happiness. He is a Harvard professor, columnist with The Free Press, host of the podcast Office Hours, …
Bernardine Evaristo is the Anglo-Nigerian award-winning author of several books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora: past, present, real, imagined. Her novel Girl…
Cassandra Clare was born to American parents in Tehran, Iran and spent much of her childhood travelling the world with her family, including one trek through the Himalayas as a toddler where she spent…
Born in the deep dark south in the mid-sixties. Brom, an army brat, spent his entire youth on the move and unabashedly blames living in such places as Japan, Hawaii, Germany, and Alabama for all his a…
Kristin Cashore grew up in the northeast Pennsylvania countryside as the second of four daughters. She received a bachelor's degree from Williams College and a master's from the Center for the Study o…
Jon Klassen received the 2010 Canadian Governor General’s Award for his illustrations in Caroline Stutson’s Cat's Night Out. He also created illustrations for the popular series The Incorrigible Child…
Samantha Shannon is the New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Bone Season series. From 2010 to 2013 she studied English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Her …
Beverley spent 8 years teaching English as a Foreign Language to International Military Students in Britannia Royal Naval College, the Royal Navy’s premier officer training establishment in the UK. Sh…
Once upon a time, Linsey Miller studied biology in Arkansas. These days, she holds an MFA in fiction and is the author of Lambda-nominated What We Devour. Her other works include the Mask of Shadows d…
Candice Carty-Williams was born in 1989, the result of an affair between a Jamaican cab driver who barely speaks and a Jamaican-Indian dyslexic receptionist who speaks more than anyone else in the wor…
C. M. Waggoner grew up in rural upstate New York, where she spent a lot of time reading fantasy novels in a swamp. She studied creative writing at SUNY Purchase and lived in China for eight years befo…
Jesse Q Sutanto grew up shuttling back and forth between Jakarta and Singapore and sees both cities as her homes. She has a Masters degree from Oxford University, though she has yet to figure out a wa…
