As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, I majored in “all things interesting,” a list which included courses in biology, ecology, natural resources management, creative writing, and poetry. After college I moved to Yosemite National Park where I worked as a naturalist and educator and learned to rock climb, back country ski, and entertain myself with nothing more than a field guide, a trail, and a pair of binoculars. Later, as a graduate student in the University of Montana’s environmental studies program, the list of “all things interesting” expanded to include Spanish and environmental education. For my thesis, I traveled to a rural community on the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico to develop an environmental education program focusing on neo-tropical migratory songbirds (a fancy title for birds that breed in the north and winter south of the border). At age thirty, I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to work as the education director for the state Audubon Society and later as a teacher. Although I didn’t publish my first book until the secret age of somewhere past young, I have always been a writer. (If you don’t believe me just check out the boxes and boxes of stories, diaries, poems, plays, and random thoughts I have written since I could first hold a pencil).  I am also a scientist wannabe, but since I realized I only liked to muck around in the field in cool places and would never actually be a scientist, I married one. When not writing, I like to hang out with my family, rock climb, try to grow a garden in the arid southwest, bird watch, travel, and attempt to play Klezmer music on my violin.

First place winner of the Arizona/New Mexico Book Awards for Code Red, book two in the Faith Flores Science Mysteries

First place winner of the National Association of Press Women young adult book category for Death Spiral, book one in the Faith Flores Science Mysteries.