Who is Anne McCaffrey

Anne McCaffrey was born on April 1st, 1926, in Cambridge, Massachusetts to George Herbert McCaffrey and Anne Dorothy McElroy McCaffrey. She was educated at Stuart Hall, Staunton Virginia, Montclair High School, Montclair, New Jersey, and graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College.

Ms. McCaffrey's first novel was written in Latin class, but not in Latin.  She became a character actress and appeared in the first successful summer music circus in Lambertsville, NJ. In her nine years of voice study she became intensely interested in the stage direction of opera and operetta, ending that phase of her experience with the direction of the American premiere of Carl Orff's LUDUS DE NATO INFANTE MIRIFICUS in which she also played a witch.

Her working career included Liberty Music Shops and Helena Rubinstein (1947-1952). She married in 1950 and has three children: Alec Anthony, b. 1952, Todd, b.1956, and Georgeanne, b.1959.

Anne McCaffrey's first story was published by Sam Moskowitz in Science Fiction + Magazine and her first novel was published by Ballantine Books in 1967. Her first novel, Restoree, was written as a protest against the absurd and unrealistic portrayals of women in s-f novels in the 50s and early 60s. It is, however, in the handling of broader themes and the worlds of her imagination, particularly the two series The Ship Who Sang and the fourteen novels about the Dragonriders of Pern that Ms. McCaffrey's talents as a story-teller are best displayed.

Although she used to make appearances throughout the world as guest of honor at science fiction conventions, arthritis has now restricted such travel. She lives in a house of her own design, Dragonhold-Underhill, in Wicklow County, Ireland.

(Condensed from The Worlds of Anne McCaffrey @ annemccaffrey.org.)