Kathryn Lasky

Kathryn Lasky (born 1944) is an American children's author of more than 100 books, best known for the Guardians of Ga'Hoole owl fantasy series. She was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on 24 June 1944, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and on Deer Isle, Maine; she has also written for adults as Kathryn Lasky Knight and E. L. Swann.

She studied English at the University of Michigan and took a master's in early childhood education at Wheelock College. She is married to Christopher Knight. Her early honours include a 1982 National Jewish Book Award for The Night Journey (1981) and a Newbery Honor for the non-fiction Sugaring Time (1983). Scholastic launched Guardians of Ga'Hoole with The Capture on 1 June 2003; the main series ran to sixteen books, with further spin-offs and companions, and more than eight million copies were printed. Its first three books were adapted as Warner Bros.' animated film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010), directed by Zack Snyder. She has also written for Scholastic's Dear America and Royal Diaries lines and the animal fantasy series Wolves of the Beyond, Bears of the Ice and Horses of the Dawn, and the non-fiction Silk and Venom (2011), about the spider scientist Greta Binford, and Night Witches (2017), about Soviet women bomber pilots. Her books have been translated into 19 languages.

For collectors: The Capture (Scholastic, 2003), the first Guardians of Ga'Hoole book, is the key title, given the series' scale and the 2010 film. Sugaring Time (1983), her Newbery Honor book, is the main earlier target.