Jennifer Carolyn Robin McKinley was born on November 16, 1952, in Warren, Ohio. Her father's navy career took her across the United States and to Japan as she was growing up. She recalls various periods of her life not by where she lived, but by what she was reading at the time. McKinley attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, from 1970 to 1972, and in 1975 received her bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

After graduating, she taught secondary school, worked in a bookstore, and worked as an editor.

Tall and, as a child, somewhat clumsy, she often felt like an outsider. Although she has had a passion for horses since the second grade and lived for two years on a horse farm, her riding ability comes from hard work rather than natural talent. There is something of Robin McKinley in Aerin, the heroine of The Hero...