Carmen Ferreiro (1958-)

Carmen Ferreiro is a freelance writer, translator, and mother of two children. Growing up in Spain, she attained her Ph.D. in biology from the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid, and later went on to spend several years working as a postdoctoral researcher at universities and government institutions in both Spain and the United States. After moving to Pennsylvania in 1993, Ferreiro decided to briefly return to school, where she took writing classes at the Institute of Children's Literature and embarked upon a career as a freelance writer. Ferreiro's books reflect their author's interest in biology and include Heroin, Ritalin and Other Methylphenidate-containing Drugs and Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathies).

Ferreiro told Something about the Author: "I was born in Northern Spain, a girl and a writer, and grew up among the misty mountains of Galicia, the land of rolling hills and green valleys surrounded by ocean, believed in medieval times to be 'Finisterre,' the place where the world came to an end.

"While still in college, I moved to the arid highlands of Castilla—the land of the castles—in Central Spain and it was there, in the capital city of Madrid, where I finished my Ph.D. in biology. For the next ten years, I worked as a researcher both in Madrid and at the University of Davis in the central California valley until, in 1993, I came to live in Pennsylvania. Once in Pennsylvania, and after taking classes from the Institute of Children's Literature and attending conferences and workshops in the field of children's literature, I started working as a freelance writer and translator.

"Following my first sale, a magazine article on latex allergy, I published three books for Chelsea House: Heroine, Ritalin, and Mad Cow Disease.

"As a fiction writer, I have published three short stories in the literary magazine Errata. One of them, a variation on O. Henry's short story 'The Marry Month of May,' won second prize in the 2004 Bucks County Writers Workshop summer contest.

"Drawing from the mysterious beauty of Galicia, my childhood country, and the tumultuous history of Spain, I have also written a young adult novel and am now working on its sequel. My novels take place in a mythical world in which the medieval kingdoms of Spain are still fighting each other, a world of warrior kings in which girls are not supposed to speak their minds.

"In my nonfiction books, I try to present facts in an engaging way, to show that science can be both a jigsaw puzzle and a detective story. In my novels, I strive to bring to life medieval Spain in the vivid, compelling way in which Rosemary Sutcliff has recreated Britain's Roman and Arthurian times."