Nancy Farmer (born July 1941) is an American author of children's and young-adult books and science fiction. She has written three Newbery Honor Books and she won the U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The House of the Scorpion, published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2002.Farmer was born in Phoenix, Arizona. She earned her B.A. at Reed College (1963) and later studied chemistry and entomology at the University of California, Berkeley.