Anne McCaffrey was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to George Herbert McCaffrey and Anne Dorothy McElroy. She received her B.A. in Slavonic Languages and Literature at Radcliffe College in 1947. She married in 1950 and has three children: Alec Anthony, born in 1952, Todd, born in 1956, and Georgeanne, born in 1959. She was divorced in 1970, after which she emigrated to Ireland.
In 1968 McCaffrey's short story "Weyr Search", the initial story in
The Dragonriders Of Pern series, won a Hugo Award for Best Novella. It was the first time a woman had won a Hugo for fiction.
At the 2005 Nebula Award ceremonies, Ms McCaffrey was named the 22nd Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America organization.
She currently lives in a house of her own design in County Wicklow, Ireland, and calls her home Dragonhold-Underhill.
