Nancy Antle

Nancy Antle is the author of many works for children and young adults including poems, short stories, picture books, beginning readers, and novels. Her stories and poems have appeared in Cricket Magazine, Children’s Playmate and Blast Off. Her story, THE KING’S CURE FOR HICCUPS, was published in Blast Off (an Australian Publication) in 1992 and received the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Magazine Merit Award.

School Zone, Viking, Dial and HarperCollins, Australia are the publishers of Nancy’s books. Her easy reader, SAM'S WILD WEST SHOW (Dial, 1995) was named an IRA/​ CBC Children's Choice book. Her young adult novel, LOST IN THE WAR (Dial, 1998), has been nominated for reader awards in Missouri, South Carolina, Nebraska and Western Australia. It was named an NCSS/​ CBC Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies and was a Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Book of the Year.

Nancy grew up mostly in Utah and Oklahoma. She studied at Oklahoma State University for three years but then transferred to San Jose State University in California where she moved with her husband so he could go to graduate school at Stanford. She graduated from SJSU in 1979 with a BA in Creative Arts.

Nancy started writing stories and poems when she was in elementary school and wrote her first novel for her father – a mystery about catching bank robbers and saving the day – when she was in the third grade. Her father, thankfully, gave it a good review. She wrote short stories and essays for her teachers in high school who also gave her good reviews and encouraged her to keep writing. She had her first publication – a poem for kids – published shortly after she graduated from college.

Besides writing, Nancy has worked at a variety of jobs -- hotel maid, secretary, teacher’s aide, nursery school teacher, writing instructor (most recently for Gotham Writer’s Workshop) and assistant librarian. She has also been a judge and/​or reader for many writing competitions -- including the Golden Kite and Work-in-Progress Grants for SCBWI. She has worked as a mentor in the Afghan Women's Writing Project (see AWWP link at right) and currently divides her time between writing on her own and writing for her professors at Southern Connecticut State University where she is pursuing an MFA in creative writing.

Since 1985 Nancy has lived in New Haven, Connecticut where her husband, Rick, is a professor in the School of Management at Yale. She has two grown children.