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Ann Downer (November 28, 1960 – November 19, 2015) was an American writer, principally offantasy novels for children and young adults, as well as short fiction and poetry.

Ann Downer was born in Arlington, Virginia in 1960 and grew up in Manila and Bangkok and recalled avidly reading fantasy fiction.^[1]

Her first published work was a trilogy published in the late 1980s and early 1990s (The Spellkey,The Glass Salamander, andThe Books of the Keepers), collected in a revised edition in 1995 asThe Spellkey Trilogy. A second series for middle-grade readers, begun in 2003 with the novelHatching Magic, continues withThe Dragon of Never-Was (2006). The Spellkey series is high fantasy, taking place wholly in an invented world and chronicling a good-versus-evil story of two foundlings, a stableboy and an ostracized seer.Hatching Magic and its sequel,The Dragon of Never-Was, are contemporary fantasies with elements oftime travel. The series follows a young girl, Theodora Oglethorpe, as she discovers a world of wizardry and magic. While Downer's books are frequently compared to the work ofPatricia A. McKillip andDiana Wynne Jones,^{[citation needed]} she has cited the influence ofUrsula K. Le Guin'sEarthsea books and theChronicles of Prydain byLloyd Alexander in shaping her outlook and prose style.^{[citation needed]}

She was diagnosed withALS in 2014 and died on 19 November 2015 in Boston, MA.^[2]

Spellkey series

• The Spellkey (1987), jacket by Caldecott-medal winnerDavid Wiesner, also a UK paperback edition from Futura/Macmillan.
• The Glass Salamander (1989), jacket by Caldecott-medal winnerDavid Wiesner
• The Books of the Keepers (1993)

All three books were collected into a paperback omnibus edition,The Spellkey Trilogy, published byBaen Books in 1995.

Hatching Magic series U.S. edition jackets by Omar Rayyan

• Hatching Magic (2003; Scholastic Book Club selection; translated into German, Czech, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Thai, and Spanish; additional languages pending)
• The Dragon of Never-Was (2006)

Other Fiction

• "Somnus’s Fair Maid" (short-listed for theJames Tiptree Jr. prize), aRegency retelling of theSleeping Beauty fairy tale, inBlack Thorn, White Rose, edited byTerri Windling andEllen Datlow
• Short stories and poetry inGargoyle Magazine in the late 1980s, including excerpts from an unpublished novel.
• "Bread-and-Butterflies" inAlice Redux (2006), a collection of short fiction inspired byLewis Carroll and edited byRichard Peabody.

• Author blog
• Bibliography on fantasticfiction.co.uk
• Ann Downer at theInternet Speculative Fiction Database

• 1960 births
• 2015 deaths
• 20th-century American novelists
• 21st-century American novelists
• American fantasy writers
• American children's writers
• American women novelists
• Smith College alumni
• Harvard University staff
• American women children's writers
• American women science fiction and fantasy writers
• 20th-century American women writers
• 21st-century American women writers
• Deaths from motor neuron disease in Massachusetts

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