Molly Beth Griffin is a recent graduate of Hamline University's MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and a writing teacher at the Loft Literary Center in the Twin Cities. A Minnesota native, she now lives in South Minneapolis with her partner and their baby boy, Jasper. She loves cooking, reading, and hiking in all kinds of weather.

Her first picture book, Loon Baby, is due out with Houghton Mifflin in the spring of 2011, and she has just sold her first Young Adult novel to Milkweed Editions (title and publication date TBA). Though her writing reaches across all age groups and genres, it all demonstrates her passion for exploring young people's changing relationship to the natural world.

Molly believes that by providing our children and young adults with great literature we can nurture the readers, writers, and thinkers of the future. "Although writing for kids is a lot of fun," she says, "it should not be taken lightly. They demand entertainment, and we must provide it, but they also deserve real art—literature that is deep, fresh, beautiful, and challenging."
To find out more about Molly's books, her writing classes, and her manuscript critique service, please visit her website.