Author Biography

Lois Szymanski says the  books she read as a child changed her life, led her on a path of adventure and made her the writer she is today. She is one of seven children, raised in Reisterstown, Maryland until she was a teen and the family moved 100 miles west to Sidling  Hill Mountain in Warfordsburg, PA.  She has a twin brother named Jimmy.  He was always the thin twin.  She was the fat one!

Learning to read changed Lois' life.  "Misty of Chincoteague was my favorite book," she said. When I read Misty's tale I became Maureen Beebe. I was no longer plain 'ol Lois Knight with stick straight brown hair and a space between my front teeth. I became someone who counted wild ponies by the sea and chased after a wisp of a filly named  Misty."

Lois' family did not take vacations and she seldom left home. She quickly learned that books took her to faraway places. She visited Chincoteague often by reading Stormy, Misty's Foal and Sea Star, Orphan of Chincoteague and other Marguerite Henry books. Years later she would take her children to the island and discover the magic she'd read about all her life. "It was like coming home," she said. Szymanski had two pet rabbits, but she longed for a horse of her own. 

When she was 17 years old Lois finally saved enough money to purchase her first horse, a chestnut mare named Ouija. She rode the mountain roads near her home, taught the mare to jump and spent some of the best days of her life scaring up flocks of wild turkey and herds of deer. She didn't know the books she read and her experiences were preparing her for the books she would one day write.

In 1980 Lois married Dan Szymanski, a man she'd met working at a printing and book binding company in Baltimore, MD.  They moved to Carroll County Maryland and had two children, Shannon and Ashley. Lois made sure they had a pony to love.

And then one day... the family took home a Chincoteague Pony Foal.  Look for SeaFeather's story in December of 2010 with Schiffer Books. Below: Baby SeaFeather at home in  Union Mills, MD

This is Lois' daughter, Shannon with gradnbaby, Norah.

This is Lois's daughter, Ashley with her favorite cat, Zachary.

This is Lois' grandchildren, Matthew, Norah and Alexis.

 This is Lois and her husband Dan in the Bahamas in 2010.

Hugging a fan at a book signing on Chincoteague Island, VA