Mylène (pronounced Milan, like the Italian city) was born in The Hague, the Netherlands in 1963, and after an intense and fulfilling career as a professional ballet dancer began her literary studies at the University of San Francisco, then turned to penning her first novel during her years as a doctoral student at Rice University.

That novel, The Medusa Tree, was praised in 1997 as "haunting" and "splendid"by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler, and as a "lyrical and clearly envisioned debut" by Ms. Magazine. She soon followed it with The Deadwood Beetle, named by the Christian Science Monitor as one of its Best Books of 2001 and by the Women's Press as one of its Great Books by Women Writers; and then with The Floodmakers (2004) her comic hybrid of play and novel.

Mylène has traveled widely: her novels and stories have been translated into French, Dutch and Turkish, and she has been a faculty member or a visiting writer at the University of Texas at Austin, the National Autonomous University of Chiapas, the University of Groningen, Rice University, and the University of St. Thomas, among others. She regularly speaks to academic audiences, businesses, fellowships, conferences, congregations and reading groups across the country, and leads workshops in creativity, writing, and the art of connecting imaginatively and powerfully through voice, movement, and action.

Her honors and awards include the Fulbright Fellowship, the Paisano Fellowship in Fiction, and the Fellowship in Writing from the McCullers Center in Columbus, Georgia, which allowed her to live in the home of the late Carson McCullers, and complete work toward her newest international novel, The Wedding of Anna F.

She makes her home in Texas and in the canyon country of southern Utah, where she lives with her traveling companions, her husband and two border collies.

Read Mylène's current blog:
American Stories NOW