Fran Hawk is the author of The Story of the H. L. Hunley and Queenie's Coin, Ten Tips for Raising Readers, and Countdown to Fall. She worked as a school librarian for ten years while writing a weekly children's book-review column for the Charleston Post & Courier. Hawk later served as a librarian at a small alternative school for at-risk children. She has a bachelor's degree in English from Randolph College and a master's of library science from Vanderbilt University. She lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, not far from where the Hunley crew lived and worked.
