Biography

Laurel Winter grew up in the mountains of Montana and attended a one-room country grade school with 12 to 25 students in grades 1 through 8. She then went 30 miles one way on the bus to Absarokee High School, where there were 33 in her graduating class. Since then she's acquired an eclectic education, including credits in English, physics, and psychology from Montana State and numerous writing and art classes. She is currently studying energy medicine.

Her first novel, Growing WIngs, was a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award for children's fantasy and she's won back-to-back Rhysling and Asimov's Readers' Poll Awards for best poem, a World Fantasy Award for best Novella ("Sky Eyes"), and the 2003 McKnight Artist Fellowship for children's fiction.

She has twin sons who have graduated from high school. Laurel belongs to a 13-pound black cat named Panther.