Kelly Barnhill

Kelly Barnhill is an award-winning American author of fantasy and speculative fiction for both children and adults. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has worked as a teacher, bartender, waitress, and midwife's assistant — experiences that inform the vivid, grounded humanity of her fantastical worlds. Barnhill won the Newbery Medal in 2017 for The Girl Who Drank the Moon, a luminous fairy tale about a witch who accidentally raises a child with extraordinary powers. The book became a bestseller and established her as one of the foremost voices in children's fantasy. Her other acclaimed works include Iron Hearted Violet, which won a Parents' Choice Gold Award, and The Witch's Boy. She has also won the World Fantasy Award for her novella The Unlicensed Magician. For adult readers, Barnhill has published Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories, a collection of darkly beautiful tales that showcase her lyrical prose and imagination, and the novel When Women Were Dragons. Critics have compared her to Neil Gaiman for her ability to weave enchantment and emotional truth into the same story. Her audiobooks and books transport listeners and readers into worlds that feel simultaneously impossible and deeply, achingly real.