This blog, running since 2008, is an informal journal of readings, reflections, and rambles through the forests of myth and legend. My focus is on fantasy, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts, along with thoughts on living a life well-rooted in myth, nature, and community. 

Myth & Moor is produced at the Bumblehill Studio: a quiet workspace on a Dartmoor hillside, at the edge of a small woodland. It was short-listed for the World Fantasy Award in 2019; and has been nominated again this year, to my very great surprise and delight. 

The Bumblehill Studio, and studio muse

I'm a writer, editor, painter, folklorist, and life-long wanderer of mythic woods. I've worked in the fantasy literature field for 30+ years, and published more than 40 books for children, teenagers, and adults. I also write articles, essays, and give talks on fantasy, folklore, and mythic subjects. I've received nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Award (for my novel The Wood Wife), the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFWA's Solstice Award for "outstanding contributions to the speculative fiction field as a writer, editor, artist, educator, and mentor." I've been short-listed twice for the Shirley Jackson Award and once for the Tiptree.

I was born on an American army base, raised in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and studied literature, folklore, and art history in Ohio, London, and Dublin. I then worked as a fiction editor in New York City; created a Mythic Arts organization in Boston; co-founded an Arts Retreat in the Arizona desert; and now live with my British husband (a theatre director and puppeteer) in a small Dartmoor village full of artists. We have one grown daughter, an elderly dog, and a tiny house crowded with books and puppets.

If you'd like to know more, please see the Author Biography on my Books website.

My literary agent is Christopher Schelling at Selectic Artists in New York.

Contact information is here.

There is no "tip jar" for Myth & Moor -- it is a nonprofit endeavor offered in the spirit of gift exchange for all who create, study, and love Mythic Arts. If you'd like to support my other writing and art projects, however, please visit my Patreon page.

Photograph: A coffee break in spring sunshine. 

Myth & Moor is strictly noncommercial: text, music, and art appears here for review, promotion, and educational purposes. Please support these artists by seeking out their work. Every time you buy a book (or artwork, album, etc.) based on a recommendation here, you are keeping the arts going during hard economic times, and fulfilling the purpose of this blog.

Perhaps you'd also consider joining me in supporting Arts Emergency, an organization that fosters diversity in the creative professions by helping young people from working class backgrounds to obtain arts training, education, and mentorship.

The drawing above is of me and Tilly (as a pup) is by our friend and neighbour David Wyatt: the rough sketch for his painting "In the Word Wood," which is part of his wonderful "Mythic Village" series. Tilly and I often begin our day in the woods behind my studio in just this fashion.

The illustrations on the right are "Little Wildrose" by H.J. Ford (1860-1941)  & "Little Red Riding Hood" by G.P. Jacomb-Hood (1857-1929).