Of Woven Wood
EMILY GRANDIN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marie Croke was born and raised in southern Maryland. Being the sixth child out of nine, she watched the rest of her family go to bed with books, so she would sit in bed with a miniature dictionary.
By the time she could read, the basement had been turned into a library, shoved full of books of every genre imaginable on account of the number of people in her family and their very different tastes. Many science fiction and fantasy authors introduced themselves to her in that basement. Eventually, she did start having to buy her own books.
The two authors she credits with shaping her love of otherworldly stories are L. Frank Baum and Anne McCaffrey. In fact, the only childhood birthday she can remember with any clarity is the one on which she received the entire Oz series. She hopes to one day inspire other children to dream big the way these authors inspired her.
In 2008, Marie began following her own dreams. Her Writers of the Future win is her first professional sale and she has since sold two more stories, one to Daily Science Fiction and another to Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
Marie graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a degree in economics and she currently lives in Maryland with her fiancé and their two children.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Emily Grandin was born April 2nd, 1978, in Hong Kong. She first circumvented the earth at nine months old, and has been an avid traveler ever since. Growing up in the Canadian suburbs of Montreal, she was a typical tomboy with a strong distaste for the color pink. When asked what her favorite color was, she would answer that it was a tie between green and black. To this day she still gets annoyed when people point out that black is not technically a color.
She spent her younger years climbing trees, casing out the local haunted mansion, devouring books and playing by the river. At school her favorite subject was, of course, art class.
As she got older, she came to terms with the color pink, sort of, stopped climbing trees as much, but her love for the arts endured.
In her mid-teens she moved with her family to Stockholm, Sweden, where she finished her university-preparatory school in the science program. She proceeded to study geology at the University of Stockholm, where she entertained her classmates with the post-apocalyptic graphic novel she would draw during lectures. She later realized one of her dreams when she was accepted into the architecture program at the Royal Institute of Technology.
Emily lives with her longtime partner and professional cartoonist, Axl. She aims at doing what she has been told is impossible, to scratch out a living drawing sci-fi themes and bunnies.