Ann Irwin and Lee Hadley have been writing books together as Hadley Irwin since 1979. The duo noted in the ALAN Review that Hadley Irwin is "over a hundred and twenty-five years old" and has "taught for 75 or 80 years, everything from kindergarten through graduate school." Irwin and Hadley told Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS) that Hadley Irwin "knows that she's lived long enough to have something to say and cares enough to try to say it as well as possible."

Ann Irwin

Ann Irwin was born in October to a proud, Welsh farming family in Iowa, but, as she explained in SAAS, her "life began one hot September day" when her mother enrolled her in the first grade at Peterson Consolidated School. "Any memory I retain of my life prior to that eventful day is fleeting, based mainly on smells." Irwin insists that she "never recovered from...