Nancy Garden was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 15, 1938. She attended Columbia University School of Dramatic Arts, which lead to work in community theater and four seasons of professional summer stock. She received a master's degree in speech from Columbia Teachers College. She taught for a while and then became an editor.
Her first two books, What Happened in Marston and a nonfiction book entitled Berlin: City Split in Two, were published in 1971. Her other works include Molly's Family, Endgame, and Annie on My Mind. She received numerous awards including the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing books for young adults in 2003, the Katahdin Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2005, and the Lee Lynch Classic Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society in 2014. She also received the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award in 2001 for her work defending Annie On My Mind from an attempt to ban it from libraries in a Kansas school district, and for her anti-censorship efforts in general. She died of a massive heart attack on June 23, 2014 at the age of 76.
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