Katherine Macdonald

Born in Redditch, England, to a solicitor and an ex-military man, one of Katherine "Kate" Macdonald's earliest memories was of watching her parents disappear behind the pages of a book and wanting to follow them. For her, books were little pocket dimensions that could be carried about, and the safest way to have a very real adventure.

Rather than rebel during her teenage years, she spent most of them locked up in her room, furiously writing down the hundreds of stories filling her head. Her little sister Kirsty served as her primary audience, and first fan. Without her, Macdonald would never have continued to write.

After completing a BA in English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University, she moved to Exeter to train as an English teacher, and then to Kent to start her career. It was only after surviving a year of parenthood and a full-time job on less than six hours a night that she finally gained the courage to publish her most recent work, "The Rose and the Thorn" a retelling of Beauty and the Beast inspired by a dream of a girl surrounded by snow in a field of flowers.