hen Hadley Dyer began her career as a children’s bookseller and reviewer in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she was only a few years out of young adult novels herself. She moved on to a “dream job” at the Canadian Children’s Book Centre in Toronto, Ontario, managing the organization’s library and selection guides. After a stint in marketing and publicity, she worked as a children’s book editor for five years. She is now a full-time writer.

In her off-hours, Hadley contributes regularly to magazines, such as OWL for Kids and Toronto Life, and teaches in the publishing program at Ryerson University. She has co-written, with Bobbie Kalman, a dozen non-fiction children’s books on a range of topics for Crabtree Publishing, including Batter Up Baseball, Outback Food Chains, and Endangered Chimpanzees. Inspired by her mother’s stories of growing up in the North End of Halifax, her first young adult novel, Johnny Kellock Died Today, was published by HarperCollins Canada in 2006. It received critical praise, including enthusiastic reviews in Canada’s national newspapers The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star, and won the Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year for Children Award. It was also named an Honour Book for the Canadian Library Association’s Young Adult Book of the Year Award and the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award, and was a finalist for three reader’s choice prizes, the Red Maple Award, the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Award, and the Rocky Mountain Book Award.

Hadley lives and works in downtown Toronto. She returns to Nova Scotia regularly to visit family and friends.