<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Robin McKinley was born in Warren, Ohio, on November 16, 1952. Her first novel, Beauty, a retelling of the classic fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast," was published in 1978 by Harper & Row.

McKinley's 1982 novel The Blue Sword begins her chronicles of the land of Damar. Heroine Harry Crewe leaves her homeland to join her brother at a desert outpost. There she becomes heir to the Blue Sword and remakes herself a powerful, magical warrior—a King's Rider. The Blue Sword was named a Newbery Honor Book for 1983. In the sequel, The Hero and the Crown, McKinley tells the origin story of the Blue Sword, which belonged once upon a time to Lady Aerin, the daughter of a witch and Damar's king. The Hero and the Crown received the 1985 Newbery Medal, and was named an ALA Notable Book and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults.

Fairy tales old and new continued to be a mainstay of McKinley's writing. She has had several children's picture books published, including The Stone Fey (1998), which is set in Damar. Three story collections have been published to date, A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories in 1994, The Door in the Hedge, and Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits in 2002, written in collaboration with her husband, Peter Dickinson. A story set in Damar appeared in the anthology Imaginary Lands (1985); the anthology, which McKinley also edited, received the 1986 World Fantasy Award for Collection/Anthology.

Her other novels include the New York Times bestseller Spindle's End (2000); Rose Daughter, McKinley's second revisiting of the "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale, and Deerskin (1993), based on Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Donkeyskin."

Sunshine, published in 2003, explores a world of magic and vampires. Rae "Sunshine" Seddon, a human being, must join forces with an intelligent yet feral vampire named Constantine, in a time when neither can survive alone. Sunshine received the 2004 Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature.

To see specific information, such as individual books, please click the Robin McKinley category link at the bottom of this article. To see other articles that reference Robin McKinley, please click the What Links Here tool in the toolbox at the bottom of this page.