A New York native, Gail Carson Levine was born September 17, 1947. She began writing in elementary school, and in high school her poems were published in two anthologies of teenage poetry. Her creative family included her father, David, who owned a commercial art studio and her mother, Sylvia, a teacher who wrote plays in rhyme for her students. Levine herself aspired to follow her sister, Rani, now a professor of fine arts, into painting.

In 1967 she married David Levine, a software developer, and then graduated from City College of the City University of New York with a B.A. in 1969. Together they created a children's musical, Spacenapped, which was produced in Brooklyn. After this first adult writing project, Levine created several children's picture books. But in a class on writing and illustrating, she discovered her real interest centered more in the words than the pictures...