Elizabeth Spires was born in 1952 in Lancaster, Ohio. She grew up in a Catholic home, attending both parochial and public schools, and developed a love of reading early on. Her parents were very supportive of her ambition to be a writer and when it came time for college, Spires left her small hometown and headed east to New York where she enrolled as an English major at Vassar College. Her initial intent was to be a short story writer, as she had been reading primarily stories, novels, and biographies since childhood. But at Vassar, Spires began taking poetry workshops and before long decided to try her hand at writing and publishing poems.

Spires received her bachelor's degree from Vassar in 1974 and returned to Ohio where she worked as an editor for a textbook publisher in Columbus, as well as a freelance writer of children's books. Her...