Anita Harlan was born in California and has lived all over the state, collecting zip codes the way some people little trinkets. Though she jokingly calls it "she likes to think of it as “method research” for storytelling.
By middleschool, she was happily lost in the worlds of science fiction and history. Her love of the past was sparked by her eighth-grade history teacher, who proved that learning dates was fine—but making them into stories was far better. She graduated with a degree in the arts, though her true education came from turning homework into short stories (though she's not sure if her teachers do or don't regret that loophole).
Somewhere along the way, Anita was told she had no skill. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on your perspective—she’s never been very good at listening. She kept writing anyway, and hasn’t stopped since.
These days, she calls Minnesota home, where she lives with her cat—an opinionated calico roommate who demands snacks even when she’s not hungry and treats midnight zoomies like a full-time performance career.
Someone once told Anita she “writes with all the skill of a fermented pumpkin.” Instead of wilting on the vine like they expected, she crowned herself the Pumpkin Queen. Turns out, fermented or not, pumpkins make great stories—and she’s been ruling the patch ever since. Because really—why be the Pumpkin Princess when you can rule the whole patch?
Whether it’s history, fantasy, or a dash of sarcasm, Anita believes stories are the best kind of mischief…and she plans to keep making plenty of it.
