Clare Buckalew Dunkle grew up in Denton, Texas, where she
spent most of her free time living inside fantasy books and memorizing all the poetry from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. She never actually wanted to write a book herself, but she did write Lloyd Alexander two cheeky letters when she was eleven, telling him what she thought his Prydain world should have been like and relating the adventures that her own characters had there. She earned a B.A. in Russian and then earned her MLS in library science so that she could stay close to books and readers. She finally succumbed to her lifelong storytelling obsession and began writing books in 2001.

Because Ms. Dunkle has always loved to read YA and
children's literature, she enjoys writing in that genre now. She readily acknowledges the influence of several "legends" on her writing, the most important being the two authors mentioned above. Her own ideas, however, usually come directly from myth and folktale (the original fantasy stories), rather than from any modern writer's books.

Ms. Dunkle has lived for several years in Kusel, Germany,
but she and her family call San Antonio home.

Biography provided by the author, April 2004.