Sherrilyn Kenyon

Sherrilyn Kenyon, known as Sherri, was born on 11 December 1965 in Columbus, Georgia, USA. She grew up in the middle of a very big family, she had eight brothers and one sister. Her father left the family when she was only eight, and her mother was forced to send her sons to live with family in Atlanta, Georgia, while she took care of her daughters, because Sherri's older sister, Trish, has severe cerebral palsy. After 18 months, the girls could moved to Atlanta with the rest of the family. At 20, Sherri was devastated when her brother Buddy died.

Sherri is is severely dyslexic, but even as a child Kenyon knew that she wanted to be a writer. In kindergarten, she wrote in her Brownie manual that she wanted to be a writer and a mother when she grew up. Her first recognition for her writing came when she won a contest in third grade by writing an essay about her mother for Mother's Day. At 7, she wrote and illustrated her first novel, a horror story about a girl who kills her brothers. At 14, she made her first professional sale, and continued to write for school newspapers, yearbooks, local papers and magazines throughout high school.

Sherri gained her "love of all things that go bump in the night" from her mother, who loved paranormal storylines and never censored what movies the young girl was allowed to watch with her. When, she was in high school, she started to writing fantasy stories for herself.