Sue Harrison grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and graduated summa cum laude from Lake Superior State University with a bachelor of arts degree in English language and literature. At age twenty-seven, inspired by the forest that surrounded her home, and the outdoor survival skills she had learned from her father and her husband, Harrison began researching the people who understood best how to live in a harsh environment: the North American native peoples. She studied six Native American languages and completed extensive research on culture, geography, archaeology, and anthropology during the nine years she spent writing her first novel, Mother Earth, Father Sky. An international bestseller and selected by the American Library Association as one of the Best Books for Young Adults in 1991, Mother Earth, Father Sky is the first novel in Harrison's critically acclaimed Ivory Carver Trilogy, which includes My Sister the Moon and Brother Wind. She is the author of the Storyteller Trilogy, also set in prehistoric North America. Her novels have been translated into thirteen languages and published in more than twenty countries. Harrison lives with her family in Michigan.