Rachel Hartman

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-19

Rachel Hartman is an American author and comics artist of young adult fantasy fiction, born July 9, 1972, in Kentucky. She attended Washington University in St. Louis, earning a BA in Comparative Literature. Hartman began her creative career as a comics artist, launching her series Amy Unbounded in 1996, for which she won the Kimberly Yale Award for Best New Talent in 2000. She transitioned to novel-length fiction with Seraphina (2012), a young adult fantasy about a half-dragon girl navigating a kingdom where humans and dragons maintain an uneasy truce, which won the Cybils Award for Best Young Adult Fantasy or Science Fiction Novel in 2012 and the William C. Morris Award in 2013, given to the best young adult debut published in the United States. She followed with the sequel Shadow Scale (2015) and later expanded the series with the companion novels Tess of the Road (2018), In the Serpent's Wake (2022), and Among Ghosts (2025), which shift focus to Seraphina's more troubled sister, Tess. Hartman's fiction is noted for its careful worldbuilding and its sensitive handling of themes including disability, trauma, and found family. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her family, and enjoys reading, tabletop role-playing games, dancing, and playing the cello in her free time.

Universe(s)

Books

• Seraphina (2012) · Seraphina Core Canon
• Shadow Scale (2015) · Seraphina Core Canon
• Tess of the Road (2018) · Seraphina Core Canon
• In the Serpent's Wake (2022) · Seraphina Core Canon
• Among Ghosts (2025) · Seraphina Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 5 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 1 (1 won)

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