Jane Smiley was born in Los Angeles and grew up in St Louis, Missouri. She was educated at Vassar College and the University of Iowa. In 1992 she won the Pulitzer Prize for A Thousand Acres, for which she also won the National Book Critics' Circle Award. Her other novels include Moo (1995), Horse Heaven (2000), Good Faith (2003), Ten Days in the Hills (2007) and Private Life (2010). She has written on politics, farming, horse-training, child-rearing, literature, impulse buying, marriage and many other topics in publications including Vogue, the New Yorker, Practical Horseman, Harper's and the New York Times. In 2006 she was awarded the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. Nobody's Horse is her first novel for young readers and draws on her lifelong love of horses. Jane lives in California with her family, three dogs, and her sixteen (and counting) horses.