The Author

Before turning to fiction writing, Marty Thompson Arnold was a teacher,  journalist, magazine editor and non-profit administrator. She is the sixth generation of her family to be born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She left the area for a decade to study at Michigan State and Northwestern University and to teach in the Chicago area. After starting a family, she moved back to West Michigan, settling in Grand Rapids on a small patch of wilderness not far from downtown.

Today, she tends a large native garden and is rewilding several acres of lawn into the oak savannah and woodland it once was.

She is a Master Naturalist and active in her local chapter of Wild Ones–a national organization dedicated to habitat restoration and “Healing the earth one yard at a time.” She also served on the Wild One’s National board from 2020-22. She also monitors butterflies as a citizen scientist for the national Butterfly Network.

Since publishing Raised in Captivity in 2018, she has met with her readers at libraries and book clubs throughout West Michigan and as far away as Washington DC. If you would like her to meet with your group to talk about either of her novels, send her an message through this site.