Virginia Hamilton was born and raised in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She attended Antioch College on a scholarship, and then transferred to Ohio State University in 1956 to study literature and creative writing. In 1958 she moved to New York City where she worked odd jobs, studied fiction writing at the New School for Social Research, and wrote. Hamilton married in 1960 and became a full-time writer. In 1967 she published her first book, Zeely, published in 1967, which won numerous awards, including the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. In 1969, Hamilton and her family moved back to Yellow Springs, Ohio. Over the course of career, she published 41 books, largely for children, which included picture books, folktales, mysteries, science fiction, novels, and biographies. She died of breast cancer in 2002.