Happy 53rd birthday, Tamora Pierce!

Today is young adult fantasy writer Tamora Pierce’s 53rd birthday. Pierce is most famous for creating young heroines, most memorably, the medieval transvestite, Alanna of Trebond from the series, The Song of the Lioness. The noble-born girl wants to become a knight and goes the way of Hilary Swank a la Boys Don’t Cry (minus the rape, but being up against a dragon is no fun either). Either way, those young female readers need their empowerment stories any way they can get them. Cross-dressing knight heroines is as good a way as any.

Tamora is probably best known to comics fans as the co-author of the recent White Tiger miniseries for Marvel starring former FBI agent Angela Del Toro, taking off from Brian Bendis’s run on Daredevil.