Sheri S. Tepper is the acclaimed author of the New York Times Notable Book and Hugo Award-nominated Grass, as well as Beauty, which won Locus magazine's Award for Best Fantasy Novel, the Edgar(r) Award-nominated Dead in the Scrub (written under the name B.J. Oliphant), and Gibbon's Decline and Fall, which was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. She has two children.