Peternelle van Arsdale grew up in Newark, New Jersey, where she attended public school through the eighth grade. After that she attended three high schools in three different towns in four years, was deeply unpopular, and counted the seconds until graduation. She majored in English literature at Bryn Mawr College, and then landed in book publishing, thinking it was a good way to be paid to do what she liked to do anyway (she was only partly wrong). She worked her way up from editorial assistant to executive editor of adult fiction and nonfiction, and eventually struck out on her own as an independent editor and ghostwriter.

She is the author of two young adult novels, The Beast Is an Animal, a “psychologically intense fantasy” (Horn Book Magazine), and The Cold Is in Her Bones, praised as “a dark, magic-infused story lit by bravery and hope.” (Booklist)

Peternelle's essays have been published by LitHub, Hypable.com, and Culturefly, and her short fiction has been published by The Whitefish Review. She has also performed personal essays for the storytelling series Generation Women. She lives in New Paltz, New York, where she is at work on her third novel.

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