Biography

Like a lot of writers, I dislike writing bios, and try to avoid it when possible. Once I resorted, in place of a bio, to what I think was a good review of the German edition of Empress of the World, Babelfished into enchantingly incoherent English. But like a lot of librarians, I’m aware that having substantive information about someone whose books you’re contemplating reading, buying, teaching, etc., is a Good Thing, so here goes.

I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the daughter of two librarians. When I was little, I wrote and drew on the backs of discarded catalog cards.

Both my careers were clearly foreshadowed by the early 1980s.

Certificate of Achievement for successfully participating in the Washtenaw County Young Authors Conference this 19th day of March, 1983.

Certificate of Service: Library Aide presented in recognition of having served well as a Library Aide Haisley School Library during the year of 1983.

I was always writing. I started playing violin in the fifth grade. By high school, I’d expanded my portfolio of geeky activities to include theater, the Ann Arbor Medieval Festival, reading a lot of comics and science fiction, and role-playing gaming.

Speaking of gaming, the one that best combined teen angst and my generation’s nuclear fears was the Self game, in which my friends and I played, yes, ourselves. But AFTER a nuclear attack. With POWERS.

I liked Ann Arbor so much I didn’t leave. I went to the Residential College of the University of Michigan. I majored in Spanish until I found out how much it would cost to spend a summer abroad, at which point I switched. I looked for something else interesting to do with my summer, and found Clarion.

Clarion changed my life, and my major (again). Major number three was Arts and Ideas, but then I fell in love with Bosch and Chaucer, and by then I was running out of time to declare more majors, so major number four, Medieval Studies, is what it says on my B.A.

Oh, and all this time as an undergrad, I’d been working in various libraries. I worked the most at the Music Library, but I put in hours at a lot of others, notably Dentistry, where medical reference books created a Gothy photo op.

I still liked Ann Arbor, and I also liked the idea of a degree that would take two years to get. So I started grad school at the School of Information and Library Studies.

I didn’t know what to expect from library school. Since it was 1993, and this Internet thing was looking like it might be pretty big, library school didn’t entirely know what to expect, either. But I got a good grad assistant job with a good boss, and eventually, I got into this class, and then it became a paying job, and that changed my life, too. Working for the Internet Public Library meant, among other things, that I got cool email from random people. One day I got a message from someone named Sharyn November.

It took more than a year of emails and friendship for me to get up the courage to tell her that I, um, wrote.

Around then, I met a cartoonist. A couple of years later we moved to Portland, Oregon, so I could take a job here, where I still work. Full-time.

Sometimes it’s challenging to be both a librarian and a writer. I worry about conflict-of-interest, probably excessively, and I often don’t get a lot of sleep.

But I’m doing what I have the documentary evidence to prove I’ve always wanted to do.