Sharon Creech was born July 29, 1945, in Cleveland, Ohio. She grew up as part of a "big, noisy family... with hordes of relatives telling stories around the kitchen table," she explained in the Seventh Book of Junior Authors & Illustrators. She was an enthusiastic writer all through her school years and loved paper, pencils, and pens. A voracious reader, she was particularly interested in American Indian myths, Greek myths, and the King Arthur legends.

Creech earned a bachelor's degree from Hiram College, a master's from George Mason University in Washington, D.C., then worked at the Federal Theater Project Archives, and as an editor at the Congressional Quarterly. In 1979, as a divorced mother of two children, she accepted a teaching position in Thorpe, England, at the TASIS England American School. There she met Lyle D. Rigg, head master, and three years later they married.

Creech lived...