I was raised in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and studied literature, art, and folklore at Antioch University in Ohio, with foreign study periods in London and Dublin. I then followed a boyfriend my dreams to New York City, where I talked my way into found a job in the publishing industry, rising through the ranks to become an editor specializing in fantasy, mythic fiction, and fairy tale literature -- 
areas of fiction for which I have a true passion, and which put my background in folklore studies to good use. I shared digs at various times with other young editors and writers -- some of whom (such as Robin McKinley and Ellen Kushner) went on to blaze brilliant careers in our field.
I moved to Boston in 1986 -- although I still worked part-time as an editor in Manhattan (reading countless manuscript submissions on the train rides between the two cities). In Boston, I rented studio space in order to start writing myself and to learn to paint -- aided in the latter by the generous help of Boston artists Thomas Canty, Rick & Sheila Berry, and Phil Hale. I started the Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts (on Boston's Endicott Street) in 1987...and twenty years later Endicott is still going strong, co-directed now with Midori Snyder.
In 1990, I moved again: this time to the beautiful Arizona desert -- where I shared a house with fantasy writer Ellen Steiber for many years, while spending summers exploring mythic landscapes in the British Isles and the rest of Europe. I lived in Arizona for 18 years, punctuated by annual travels abroad -- until 2008, when I married my partner (an Englishmen) and we settled down in the west of England.
I now live in a small village on the edge of Dartmoor with my sweet-and-funny husband (dramatist Howard Gayton), our lovely daughter (Victoria Windling-Gayton), and an irrepressibly joyful black dog named Tilly.
Tilly & Victoria on Dartmoor, Devon, 2010
"Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I'll tell you who you are."
- Jose Ortega y Gasset
"In the Word Wood," a painting of me and Tilly in the woods behind my studio,
autumn 2011, by my friend and neighbor David Wyatt
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Art credits: "Medicine Road" painting by Charles Vess; New Yorker cover by Adrian Tomine; "TW in Tucson" photograph 1992 by E. Roberts; "TW in Tucson" photograph 2000 by Carol Amos; "TW at Weaver's Cottage" photograph 2007 by Alan Lee; "Howard Gayton & TW " photograph 2010 by Victoria Windling-Gayton; "Tilly and Victoria on Dartmoor" photograph 2010 by TW; "In the Word Wood" by David Wyatt, from his Local Characters series; TW bio photo on the previous page by Alan Lee.
