Sweeney, Ashley E.: - Award-winning author Ashley E. Sweeney was born in New York and graduated from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. Her multiple awards include the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, Nancy Pearl Book Award, Independent Publisher Book Award, Next Generation Indie Book Award, and Arizona Authors Association Literary Award; she has also been a finalist for the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award, Sarton Women's Book Award, and WILLA Literary Award for Historical Fiction (twice), among others. Ashley lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest and Tucson. Hardland is her third novel.