Celia Barker Lottridge was born in Iowa City in 1936. Her family moved often as her father, a college professor, moved from job to job, and as a child Lottridge became an avid reader in lieu of making lasting friendships. Lottridge graduated from Stanford University in 1957 with a degree in modern European history in 1957, and from Columbia University with a master of library science in 1959. She worked as a children's librarian in San Diego and then at a private school in New York City. Upon her divorce from her husband in the mid-1970s, she and her six-year-old son moved to Toronto, where her brother lived, and she has remained there ever since. While working as a book buyer in Toronto, Lottridge continued storytelling and writing, and her first published work, Gerasim and the Lion, was released in 1979. She helped to form the Storyteller's School of Toronto to promote storytelling in the city's schools, and in the 1980s she began writing seriously. She has written or contributed to over twenty books.