About the Author

Anne Inez McCaffrey (1926-2011) was an American-born Irish writer, best known for the Dragonriders of Pern science fiction series. Early in McCaffrey's forty-six-year career as a writer, she became the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction and the first to win a Nebula Award. Her 1978 novel The White Dragon became one of the first science fiction books to appear on the New York Times bestseller list. In 1999, she was the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award, honoring her lifetime contribution to writing for teens. In 2005 the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named McCaffrey its twenty-second Grand Master, an annual award to living writers of fantasy and science fiction. She was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2006.

Beloved author Tamora Pierce has written a great number of books, including the Song of the Lioness quartet, The Immortals quartet, the Circle of Magic quartet, the Protector of the Small quartet, The Circle Opens quartet, the Trickster series, The Will of the Empress, Melting Stones, the Beka Cooper series, and The Numair Chronicles. She lives in upstate New York with various cats, other four-legged animals, and birds who feed in her yard, and can be e-visited at Tamora-Pierce.net.