Why did being a princess always come down to taxes and cows?

-Handbook for Dragon Slayers

 

Press Kit

  • a photograph of a smiling white woman with brown hair tipped in blue, standing by a lake. She has a blue shirt and a necklace with a small silver stylized bunny.

    Author Info

    Permission is granted to use the linked photograph for promotional or press purposes. Photo courtesy Scott Kennedy.

    Name pronunciation: Meh-ree Hasss-kuhl

  • closeup of The Princess Curse cover: an illustration of a pre-teen girl with pale skin and brown hair and eyes, wearing a medieval-style dress and holding a basket of flowers and leaves, standing in front of a forest of blue-barked trees

    Book Covers

    High Resolution Cover of The Princess Curse (1200 x 1814 px)

    High Resolution Cover of Handbook for Dragon Slayers (1200 x 1818 px) (no medal sticker)

    High Resolution Cover of The Castle Behind Thorns (1200 x 1814 px)

  • a photograph of two cement books, slightly pocked with lichen and moss (these books are located outside the Clements Library at University of Michigan, and are carriage steps from the 19th century)

    Biographies

    Twitter-Length Biography
    @merriehaskell: author of THE CASTLE BEHIND THORNS & HANDBOOK FOR DRAGON SLAYERS; winner of Schneider Award; lives in MI, works in a library

    25-Word Biography
    Merrie Haskell is the author of The Castle Behind Thorns and Handbook for Dragon Slayers (winner of the Schneider Family Book Award). She lives in Michigan.

    50-Word Biography
    Merrie Haskell’s novels are The Princess Curse, Handbook for Dragon Slayers and The Castle Behind Thorns. Merrie won the 2014 Middle Grades Schneider Family Book Award and was a finalist for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature in 2013 and 2015. She lives in Michigan and works in a library with 7.5 million volumes.

    100-Word Biography
    Merrie Haskell grew up half in North Carolina, half in Michigan. She wrote her first story at age seven. She attended the University of Michigan, graduating from the Residential College with a degree in biological anthropology. She works in a library with over 7.5 million bound volumes.

    Her first three books are The Princess Curse, Handbook for Dragon Slayers, and The Castle Behind Thorns. She won the Schneider Family Book Award (Middle Grades) and the DetCon1 Middle Grade Speculative Fiction award, and she was twice a finalist for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. Merrie lives in Saline, Michigan.

    Long Form Biography
    Merrie Haskell grew up half in North Carolina, half in Michigan. She wrote her first story at age seven, and she walked dogs after school to save for her first typewriter. She attended the University of Michigan, where she graduated from the Residential College with a degree in biological anthropology and a few dead languages under her belt. She has worked in libraries since she her student years, doing various jobs from opening mail to overseeing a non-profit, fee-based document delivery service.

    Her second book, Handbook for Dragon Slayers (2013), won the Schneider Family Book Award for Middle Grades in 2014 and the DetCon1 Middle Grade Speculative Fiction award. Her first book, a Middle Grade historical fantasy from HarperCollins called The Princess Curse (2011), was a Junior Library Guild selection and a finalist for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. Her next book, The Castle Behind Thorns (2014) received two starred reviews, and was also a Junior Library Guild selection and a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award and the Cybils. Her short fiction has appeared in Nature, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and various anthologies.

    Merrie was the Michigan State University Young Authors’ Conference Middle Grade author in residence in 2013 and 2015, and was a sponsored author at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Youth Literature Festival 2014. She served on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America jury for the Andre Norton Award in 2012 and 2014, and chaired the jury in 2013.

    Merrie lives in Michigan.