J. Anderson Coats is a writer, historian and librarian living in the Pacific northwest. Her first name is Jillian, and she was named after a crazy cat lady her parents once met on a park bench in Adelaide, South Australia.

She doesn't hold it against them, though.

J was a finalist in Sassy magazine's Sassiest Girl in America contest when she was a teenager.  She might have won if she had been more effective at covering her adolescent misanthropy.  But she has a glossy, once-nationally circulated magazine with her picture in it as consolation.

At twenty-two, J graduated magna cum laude with departmental honors from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in history and a son in preschool. She also has masters degrees in history and library science, which she uses primarily to trick research libraries into letting her smell the old books.

Her current projects are set in medieval Wales. Like all good historical fiction, there is name-calling, bloodshed and moderate amounts of cursing. One of her favorites can be found here.