Morgan Llywelyn is an American-Irish historical interpretation author of historical and mythological fiction and historical non-fiction. Her interpretation of mythology and history has received several awards and has sold more than 40 million copies, and she herself is recipient of the 1999 Exceptional CelticWoman of the Year Award from Celtic Women International.
Biography
Llywelyn was born Sally Snyder in New York in 1937. In her teens, Llywelyn moved to the Dallas area, where she developed a love of horses. By the age of 16, Llywelyn was competing in professional horse shows across the United States. By age 18, she modeled for Neiman Marcus and Arthur Murray. After 15 years of experience as a horse trainer and instructor, she tried out for and narrowly missed making the 1976 United States Olympic Team in dressage. She was instead shortlisted, missing the cut off score by.05 percent. With her mother's encouragement and a successfully published article on horse training, she refocused her efforts in tracing the Llywelyn family history and eventually made a career out of writing historical novels that allowed the exploration of her Celtic roots. In reference to this career change, Llywelyn had this to say:
I have a strong strain of Welsh on my mother's side, which does indeed go back to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth. And Llywelyn the Great! She was very proud of her royal Welsh connection. That is why she was so interested in genealogy in the first place, and inspired me to get involved as well ... leading in turn to THE WIND FROM HASTINGS. But both my parents were predominantly Irish – my father totally so – and I spent half the years of my childhood here. So I have always been much more interested in Ireland and its history and legends.
Llywelyn has received several awards for her works. She received the Novel of the Year Award from the National League of American Penwomen for her novel, The Horse Goddess, as well as the Woman of the Year Award from the Irish-American Heritage Committee for . The latter award was presented to her by Ed Koch, then-mayor of New York City. Although Llywelyn's grandparents have their roots in Ireland, it was only after the death of her parents and her husband in 1985 that she relocated to Ireland. Llywelyn now lives outside Dublin and has become an Irish citizen. In 1990, Llywelyn began her focus on writing books geared for younger readers. These works started with Brian Boru: Emperor of the Irish, for which she won an Irish Children's Book TrustBisto Award in 1991, and includes other titles, such as Strongbow: The Story of Richard and Aoife, for which she won a Bisto Award in the Historical Fiction category, 1993 and the Reading Association of Ireland Award, 1993, and Star Dancer, which departed from her usual Celtic topic and was centered on her experiences with dressage. Further works include The Vikings in Ireland, an exploration of when the Norsemen arrived in Ireland, and Pirate Queen, a younger reader's version of the story of Grace O'Malley, told through letters from Granuaile to her beloved son.
