
I grew up in a small shingled house down at the end of Guilford Road in College Park, Maryland. Our block was loaded with kids my age. We spent hours outdoors playing "Kick the Can" and "Mother, May I" as well as cowboy and outlaw games that usually ended in quarrels about who shot whom. In the summer, we went on day long expeditions into forbidden territory—the woods on the other side of the train tracks, the creek that wound its way through College Park, and the experimental farm run by the University of Maryland. In elementary school, I was known as the class artist. I loved to read and draw but I hated writing reports. Requirements such as outlines, perfect penmanship, and following directions killed my interest in putting words on paper. All those facts—who cared what the principal products of Chile were? To me, writing reports was almost as boring as math. Despite my dislike of writing, I loved to make up stories. Instead of telling them in words, I told them in pictures. My stories were usually about orphans who ran away and had the sort of exciting adventures I would have enjoyed if my mother hadn't always interfered. When I was in junior high school, I developed an interest in more complex stories. I wanted to show how people felt, what they thought, what they said. For this, I needed words. Although I wasn't sure I was smart enough, I decided to write and illustrate children's books when I grew up. Consequently, at the age of thirteen, I began my first book. Small Town Life was about a girl named Susan, as tall and skinny and freckle faced as I was. Unlike her shy, self conscious creator, however, Susan was a leader who lived the life I wanted to live—my ideal self, in other words. Although I never finished Small Town Life, it marked the start of a lifelong interest in writing. In high school, I kept a diary. In college, I wrote poetry and short stories and dreamed of being published in The New Yorker. Unfortunately, I didn't have the courage or the confidence to send anything there. By the time my first novel was published, I was 41 years old. That's how long it took me to get serious about writing. The Sara Summer took me a year to write, another year to find a publisher, and yet another year of revisions before Clarion accepted it. Since Sara appeared in 1979, I've written an average of one book a year. If I have a plot firmly in mind when I begin, the writing goes fairly quickly. More typically, I start with a character or a situation and only a vague idea of what's going to happen. Therefore, I spend a lot of time revising and thinking things out. If I'd paid more attention to the craft of outlining back in elementary school, I might be a faster writer, but, on the other hand, if I knew everything that was going to happen in a story, I might be too bored to write it down. Writing is a journey of discovery. That's what makes it so exciting.
Series
Books

The Jellyfish Season
1985

The Sara Summer
1979

The Thirteenth Cat
2021
Deep and Dark and Dangerous/All the Lovely Bad Ones
2009

The Puppet's Payback and Other Chilling Tales
2020

Wait Till Helen Comes
A Ghost Story
1986

The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall
2010

Following the Mystery Man
1988

Guest
A Changeling Tale
2019

The Dead Man in Indian Creek
1990

Look for Me by Moonlight
1995

The Girl in the Locked Room
A Ghost Story
2018

The Old Willis Place Graphic Novel
A Ghost Story
2024

A Haunting Collection by Mary Downing Hahn
Deep and Dark and Dangerous, All the Lovely Bad Ones, and Wait Till Helen Comes
2016

Took
A Ghost Story
2015

The Gentleman Outlaw and Me--Eli
1996

All the Lovely Bad Ones
A Ghost Story. Graphic Novel
2023

As Ever, Gordy
1998

The Doll in the Garden
A Ghost Story
1989

Stepping on the Cracks
1991

The Spanish Kidnapping Disaster
1991

Time for Andrew
A Ghost Story
1994

Anna on the Farm
2001

Anna All Year Round
1999

Where I Belong
2014

The Time of the Witch
1982

The Wind Blows Backward
1993

Witch Catcher
2006

Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls
2012

Deep and Dark and Dangerous
2007

Hear the Wind Blow
2003

Took
A Ghost Story. Graphic Novel
2022

What We Saw
A Thriller
2022

Tallahassee Higgins
1987

Following My Own Footsteps
1996

Mary Downing Hahn's Haunting Tales
2011

December Stillness
1988

All the Lovely Bad Ones
2008

Promises to the Dead
2000

One for Sorrow
A Ghost Story
2017

Closed for the Season
2009

Daphne's Book
1983

The Old Willis Place
2004