Tamora Pierce

2019 Knickerbocker Winner

From Ms. Pierce's website.....I was born in South Connellsville, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, on December 13, 1954, which makes me a Sagittarius, if you believe in such things. For those who look to Eastern tradition, I was born in the Year of the Horse. My mother wanted to name me “Tamara,” but the nurse who filled out my birth certificate had never heard of such a fancy name (we are talking Pennsylvania coal country in the 1950s), so she misspelled it, and I legitimately became Tamora (pronounced like “camera”). I actually like it better than Tamara, which means “graceful” and “a palm tree,” and is the name of a Russian saint. I am none of these things...

In 1992, I became one of the lucky, rare percentage of writers who can actually make a living from their writing (it wasn’t much of a living for a long time, but it beat being a secretary). We struggled through most of the 1990s as my books gained popularity slowly. By 1995, I was starting to do more than the occasional school appearance; I began to go to science fiction conventions in 1997 or 1998, and in 2000, I went on my first publisher-sponsored tour, in England! Then came my second publisher tour, to Australia; after that, it was the United States and Canada. When they send you on tour, you can be assured of one thing: you have arrived. I look forward to it because I get to see places I might never go otherwise, and to meet the people who have been keeping me in print and who love my books. It’s good to be able to put faces to names, to talk about what people like and don’t like, to find out what they’d like to see in my books, and to learn what else they’re reading and want to recommend. (I am always looking for good new books to read.) My success is due to my readers, adults and kids, and I love being able to thank them in person....continue reading on her website.