Kathleen Martin was born in Toronto, lived in Sudbury, Ontario, until she was 12 and then moved to Spring Valley in Illinois, a place that has been home to her father’s family for five generations. Her mother’s family has been rooted in Halifax for almost as long, and although her parents and older brother are still in Illinois, and she still misses hot summers and fields of corn stretching to the horizon, Halifax is where Kathleen is very happy to have ended up.

Kathleen came to Halifax by way of the University of Toronto, where she earned her BA (Honours) in English, and Queen’s University in Kingston, where she earned her master’s degree in English. She moved to Nova Scotia when Mike, now her husband, came to study the endangered leatherback sea turtle.

Kathleen is the author of six non-fiction books for children: Sturdy Turtles, Building Beavers, Floating Jellyfish, Gentle Manatees, Soaring Bald Eagles and Swimming Salmon (Lerner Publishing Group). She is also the author of Kamakwie: Finding Peace, Love and Injustice in Sierra Leone (Red Deer Press) for teenagers and adults. She is the Nova Scotia representative for the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, has edited children’s fiction books for Front Street/Cricket Books in Chicago, and was an acquisitions editor for the Cricket Magazine Group.

Kathleen also writes for adults. She was the Atlantic correspondent for Marketing Magazine for a decade. She edits fiction, poetry and non-fiction books for publishers in Canada and the United States, and has written for a variety of magazines and newspapers. She previously taught communications at Acadia University.

When she isn’t freelancing, Kathleen is the executive director of the Canadian Sea Turtle Network, which allows her to spend a lot of time with fishing community members across Nova Scotia and a lot of time learning about and attempting to help sea turtles, her favourite animals.