Fantasy and science fiction author Katharine Kerr was born (as Katharine Brahtin) on October 3, 1944, in Cleveland, Ohio. She never knew her father, who was killed in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.

When Kerr was an adolescent her family moved to Santa Barbara in Southern California. After briefly attending Stanford University in the early 1960s, majoring in classics, she moved to the San Francisco Bay area, where she has continued to live. She held a number of low-paying jobs after leaving Stanford, while being involved in various civil rights and feminist movements.

She also read extensively in the fields of history, language, and literature, becoming a mostly self-taught scholar in medieval, especially Celtic, history. Kerr can read Latin, French, and Welsh, as well as some Spanish and Italian, but can speak only English.

Kerr became interested in fantasy roleplaying games in...