Renda Knapp is a thriller writer who spent over 25 years delivering babies and delivering justice—on the page, that is. After earning her medical degree from the University of South Florida, she juggled surgical instruments, stethoscopes, and seven children before adding "novelist" to her already impressive résumé.
During her career as an OB/GYN, Renda collected enough stories to fill a hospital wing. While patient confidentiality prevents her from telling the real tales, her fiction features the authentic medical details that only someone who's been elbow-deep in the drama of birth could write.
Her medical adventures rival her fictional plots—like the time she performed a C-section in Kenya with nothing but sunlight streaming through a glassless window, a determined mother, and just three precious sutures to close everything from uterus to skin. While mom cradled her newborn, Renda MacGyvered the rest, proving that medicine, like good writing, is part science, part art, and part pure audacity.
When she's not creating resilient female protagonists who face overwhelming odds, Renda tends to her peony farm in Homer, Alaska, where the flowers are delicate but tough—much like her characters. She's an adrenaline junkie who has hiked, kayaked, and adventured her way across all seven continents, occasionally pausing to worry her adult children by texting them from remote locations.
Renda believes the best stories, like the best surgeries, require a steady hand, perfect timing, and knowing exactly where to make the first cut. Her writing combines pulse-pounding suspense with emotional depth, proving that sometimes the most harrowing operations happen outside the OR.
