Jeanne DuPrau

DuPrau was born in San Francisco, California in 1944. She received her bachelor’s degree at Scripps College and then received teaching credentials at the University of California, Berkeley. She’s been a teacher, an editor, and a technical writer over the course of her life. DuPrau first garnered attention for her writing with her 1981 book Adoption: The Facts, Feelings, and Issues of a Double Heritage, which explored the emotional landscape of being adopted. Over the next several decades, she wrote several other nonfiction works, including the memoir The Earth House, but The City of Ember is her most famous work. She lives in Menlo Park, California, where she spends much of her time gardening.