Mary Shaffer is the author of Wick and Arrow, a folkloric fantasy inspired by "The Snow Queen." The daughter of a visual artist and a high school English teacher, Mary grew up in a hundred-year-old farmhouse in rural Minnesota. Now she lives in a hundred-year-old house in rural Wisconsin with her cat Sebastian, named for the maddeningly charming character from Brideshead Revisited. Mary earned a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts with an Emphasis in Theatre at St. Olaf College. She also holds a Masters of Arts in Theology from the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. In addition to being cofounder and artistic director of Missed the Boat Theatre, she is a spiritual director and teacher on the interior life. Her artistic philosophy and practice is heavily influenced by the work of Jacques Maritain, especially his Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry.