Alan Garner was born in Congleton, Cheshire October, 17, 1934.  He went to school at Alderley Edge Primary School and Manchester Grammar School and then at Magdalen College, Oxford.  He left before he completed his degree.  At Oxford he met both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  He was a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery.  He began his first novel The Weirdstone of Brisingamen at twenty-two. 

Alan Garner continues to live in Cheshire where he continues to write.  He suffers from manic depression.  He has three children from his first marriage: Ellen, Adam and Katherine.  He is married to Griselda, his second wife who is  a teacher, and they have two children: Joseph and Elizabeth. 

He won the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal, for The Owl Service and was the first author to win both awards for one book.  He won the Phoenix Award for The Stone Book Quartet.