Nancy was born in 1941 in Phoenix.  She attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, earning her BA in 1963.  Instead of taking a regular job, she joined the Peace Corps and was sent to India (1963-1965). When she returned she went to Berkeley and sold newspapers on the street for a while, then got a job in the Entomology department at UC Berkeley and also took courses in Chemistry there.  Restless, again, she decided to visit Africa.  She and a friend tried to hitchhike by boat but the ship they’d selected turned out to be stolen and was boarded by the Coast Guard just outside the Golden Gate Bridge.  Nancy was forced to buy an airline ticket.  She spent more than a year, living virtually alone, on Lake Cabora Bassa in Mozambique, monitoring water weeds. Next she was hired to help control tsetse fly in the dense bush on the banks of the Zambezi in Zimbabwe.  Part of the time she spent in the capital, Harare, and there met her future husband.  They married a few weeks later (in 1976) and now live in Menlo Park, California.  They have a son, Daniel, who is in the U.S. navy.

Nancy’s honors include the National Book Award (Children’s Literature) for The House of the Scorpion and Newbery Honors for The Ear, the Eye and The Arm, A Girl Named Disaster and The House of the Scorpion.  She is the author of eight novels, three picture books and a number of short stories.  Her books have been translated into 26 languages.