About the author

Frances O'Roark Dowell

Frances O’Roark Dowell is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of&nbsp;<em>Dovey Coe</em>, which won the Edgar Award and the William Allen White Award;&nbsp;<em>Where I’d Like to Be</em>;&nbsp;<em>The Secret Language of Girls</em>&nbsp;and its sequels&nbsp;<em>The Kind of Friends We Used to Be&nbsp;</em>and&nbsp;<em>The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away</em>;&nbsp;<em>Chicken Boy</em>;&nbsp;<em>Shooting the Moon</em>, which was awarded the Christopher Medal; the&nbsp;<strong>Phineas L. MacGuire</strong>&nbsp;series;&nbsp;<em>Falling In</em>; the critically acclaimed&nbsp;<em>The Second Life of Abigail Walker</em>;&nbsp;<em>Anybody Shining</em>;&nbsp;<em>Ten Miles Past Normal</em>;&nbsp;<em>Trouble the Water</em>; and most recently the&nbsp;<strong>Sam the Man</strong>&nbsp;series.<br><br>While Frances is best known for her “beloved books for tweens and teenagers” (<em>New York Times Sunday Book Review</em>), since 2010 she has hosted a popular podcast about her life as a quilter, and in 2016 established a small publishing company to bring out a line of stories and novels especially for quiltmakers and quilt lovers. The quilting novel&nbsp;<em>Birds in the Air</em>&nbsp;was followed by the short story collection&nbsp;<em>Margaret Goes Modern</em>&nbsp;in 2017.&nbsp;<em>Stars Upon Stars</em>&nbsp;— a sequel to&nbsp;Birds in the Air&nbsp;— will be published in 2019.<br><br>​​​​​​​She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband, two sons, and a dog named Travis.