Marion Zimmer was born in Albany, NY, on June 3, 1930, and married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949. Mrs. Bradley received her B.A. in 1964 from Hardin Simmons University in Texas, then did graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1965-67. She has been a science fiction/fantasy fan since her middle teens, and made her first sale as an adjunct to an amateur fiction contest in FANTASTIC/AMAZING STORIES in 1949. She has also been writing as long as she can remember, but wrote only for school magazines and fanzines until 1952, when she sold her first professional short story to VORTEX SCIENCE FICTION. She has written everything from science fiction to Gothics, but is probably best known for her Darkover novels. In addition to her novels, Mrs. Bradley has edited many magazines, amateur and professional. She now edits Marion Zimmer Bradley's FANTASY Magazine, which she started in 1988. She also edits an annual anthology called SWORD AND SORCERESS for DAW Books. Over the years she turned more to fantasy; THE HOUSE BETWEEN THE WORLDS, although a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club, was "fantasy undiluted". She wrote a novel of the women in the Arthurian legends -- Morgan Le Fay, the Lady of the Lake, and others -- entitled MISTS OF AVALON, which remained four months on the NY Times best seller list, and she has also written THE FIREBRAND, a novel about the women of the Trojan War. Her historical novel, THE FOREST HOUSE, is a prequel to MISTS OF AVALON, and her newest book, which fits between them, is called LADY OF AVALON.

Essentially this book is a reworking of the Aurthurian romances. Now usually we see the evil Morgan Le Fay pitted against Guinevere. Ah, but here is where the book really begins to manipulate us as readers. The author chooses to transform Morgan le Fay into our heroine called Morgaine. Normally, she is an evil witch, but in this version she is a high priestess serving the goddess. This book brings Aurthurian romance to the feminist perspective while enriching the plot and context. It will draw together for the reader the oneness of the great goddess and Christianity. It does away with the myth that all women of power must be whores.