Brenda Rickman Vantrease is a former librarian and English teacher from Nashville, Tennessee. She grew up and was educated in the Middle Tennessee area where she graduated with a B.A. in English from Belmont University in 1967. During the twenty-five years she served as an educator in Nashville, she earned a masters degree and a doctorate from Middle Tennessee State University.

After retiring from the Metro Nashville School System in 1991, Brenda set out to study and practice the craft of writing fiction on a full time basis. She and her husband Don used their vacations to travel to writers' conferences and workshops from Maine to California. During that time, her essays and short stories found a home in several periodicals and anthologies, among them VeriTales (Fall Creek Press) Thema, and Coast to Coast. Her first novel The Illuminator, from St. Martin's Press, was translated into fourteen foreign languages and garnered praise from several respected writers and trade journals. It was a Booksense pick for March of 2007 and was included on the Booksense list of recommended books for bookclubs, 2006-2007.

The oldest of three children, Brenda was born in 1945 in White County, Tennessee, to a World War II veteran and his "Rosie the Riveter" wife. She grew up in a series of small towns in the Southeastern United States. The Illuminator, a story of love, art, and religion, is dedicated to Brenda's parents, Barney and Arlene Rickman. Brenda still resides in Nashville with her husband of 31 years to whom her second novel is dedicated.  The Mercy Seller was published by St. Martin's Press in hardcover in March of 2007. The paperback edition was released from St. Martin's Griffin, April, 2008. Brenda is hard at work on her third novel, which will be published by St. Martin's in late 2009.

Brenda would love to hear from you. Contact Brenda