Farmer was born in
Phoenix, Arizona. She earned her B.A. at
Reed College (1963) and later studied chemistry and entomology at the University of California, Berkeley.[3] She enlisted in the
Peace Corps (1963–1965), and subsequently worked in
Mozambique and
Rhodesia (present-day
Zimbabwe), where she studied biological methods of controlling the
tsetse fly between 1975 and 1978.[3]
She met her future husband, Harold Farmer, at the University of Rhodesia (now the
University of Zimbabwe). They married after a week-long courtship. As of 2010, Farmer lives in Arizona's
Chiricahua Mountains with her husband. They have one son, Daniel.[4]
Bibliography
Novels
Lorelei: The Story of a Bad Cat (Harare, Zimbabwe: College Press, 1987)
The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm (College Press, 1989)[5]
Casey Jones's Fireman: The Story of Sim Webb, illus. James Bernardin (New York: Phyllis Fogelman Books, 1999)
Clever Ali, illus. Gail De Marcken (Orchard, 2006)
Short stories
"The Mirror", L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume IV (1988), pp. 35–65 – collection of twelve 1987 finalists; "The Mirror" won the grand prize[7]
^
ab"National Book Awards – 2002".
National Book Foundation (NBF). Retrieved 2012-01-26. (With acceptance speech by Farmer and introduction by panelist
Han Nolan, who remarked: "this year perhaps more than any other year obliterated any boundaries left between the young adult and adult novel.")
^"The eye, the ear, and the arm" (1989 printing). Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved 2013-11-23. Catalog records show The Eye ..., 1989, 160 pages; The Ear ..., 1994, 311 pages.