Maggie McConnell is a Golden Heart-nominated romance novelist (Spooning Daisy, Eclipsing Maddie) who moonlights as internationally-selling women’s fiction writer, Kate René MacKenzie (A School of Daughters). 

Maggie (and Kate) spent her childhood overseas, the daughter of US diplomats. Attending college in Illinois, she volunteered at the local humane shelter, eventually becoming director. While earning a BA in Art and then an MBA, Maggie worked at various jobs including go-go girl, bartender, and teaching assistant. At 26, she sold her 280Z and packed her dog and cat into a Ford truck and drove the Alcan Highway to Alaska where she spent 23 years exploring The Last Frontier in a single-engine Cessna. Her next adventure was in Arizona on a no-kill ranch at the end of the road where she photographed and journaled her many encounters with the local wildlife. A vegan and animal rights advocate, Maggie provides a sanctuary for all creatures great and small, but her immediate family includes horses Quinn and Hershey, cat Noelle and dog Lucy. Between writing and family, Maggie continues to travel, using the places she has lived and visited as settings for her books. But her compass always points north to Alaska.