Roanoke Girls (Engle) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Kansas
• Raised—Iran; Taiwan; Kansas City, Missouri, USA
• Education—University of Kansas; J.D. Georgetown University
• Currently—lives near Kansas City, Missouri


Amy Engle is best known as a young adult writer, but in 2017 she made her first foray into adult books with the gothic thriller The Roanoke Girls.

Born in Kansas, Amy's family moved to Iran when she was three. After her parents' divorced, she returned to the States, to Kansas City, Missouri. When her mother remarried, she moved with her mother and stepfather to Taiwan. The family eventually returned to Kansas City, Missouri, where Amy graduated from high school. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Kansas and then headed to Washington, D.C., where she earned a law degree from Georgetown University.

With her law degree in hand, Amy returned to Kansas City. During the next 10 years, she worked as a criminal defense attorney, married a another attorney, and started a family. Once her children were born, Amy decided to leave law and stay at home. However, she set a 10-year goal for herself: to write and publish a book.

The results of her efforts, after some procrastination and a false start or two, were her popular 2014 The Book of Ivy, and its sequel, The Revolution of Ivy, in 2015. Both are young adult novels. Between the two Ivy novels, Amy began work on her first adult novel, which became The Roanoke Girls, released in 2017. Amy said she enjoyed "exploring the shadowy side of the human experience." (Adapted from the author's website.)