Shannon Hale

Shannon Hale is the author of five award-winning young-adult novels, including the bestselling Newbery Honor book Princess Academy. Austenland was her first book for adults. She and her husband are co-writing a series of graphic novels, and live with their two small children in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Before writing professionally, she wrote while pursuing acting in television, stage, and improv comedy; and while studying in Mexico and the UK. She spent and a year and a half as an unpaid missionary in Paraguay, then returned to the U.S. to earn her bachelors degree in English from the University of Utah and a masters in creative writing from the University of Montana.

Her first published book, The Goose Girl, was an ALA Teens' Top Ten and Josette Frank Award winner. Princess Academy is a Newbery Honor Book and a New York Times bestseller.

Shannon Bryner was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she attended West High School. She earned a Bachelors Degree in English from the University of Utah and a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from the University of Montana.

She has two children with husband Dean Hale, son Max (b. 2003) and daughter Magnolia (b. 2006), and the family resides in South Jordan, Utah. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Hale has been writing since the age of 10, but met with numerous rejections until her first book The Goose Girl was finally published in 2003. In 2004 her second novel, Enna Burning, which follows Enna, a minor character from The Goose Girl, was published. The third installment in the Bayern series, River Secrets, was released in September 2006. By then Hale had earned numerous awards for her 2005 release, Princess Academy, including the prestigious Newbery Honor. Her book Book of a Thousand Days won a Newbery Honor as well.

Her writing projects currently in progress include Rapunzel's Revenge (2008), a graphic novel she and her husband are writing together, as well as an adult novel tentatively titled The Actor and the Housewife, a young adult science fiction novel, and the fourth book in the Books of Bayern series, currently titled Forest-born.

Hale previously worked as an instructional designer. She designed and produced web-based training for Avaltus and Allen Communication until her writing career took off.

Website: http://www.squeetus.com/stage/main.html