Vicki Hessel Werkley is the author of the noted historical novel "Girl-On-Fire", winner of the 2001 Independent Publisher’s Finalist Award for multicultural fiction.

Her articles have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines throughout the country. Favorite topics include the history of the American West, animals – especially horses – and science fiction. Psychology, dreams and the world of the spirit figure prominently in all her work. This is her first published novel.

Born into an Air Force family stationed in the Panama Canal Zone, Vicki later lived in Texas, Arizona and very briefly in Japan, but has been a Californian since 1957, and has been a writer since second grade. Throughout her school years, Vicki won numerous awards for her poetry and short fiction, including a National Scholastic Writing Award.

Vicki enjoyed fourteen years as an educator in Mendocino County schools, has worked extensively as a peer counselor and mediator. For many years she has been a professional editor, and has been editing other people's writings – even during a time she was legally blind.

Now enjoying better eyesight, Vicki lives in Lake County, California with Tom, her husband of thirty years, and Lani (short for Hokulani, which is Hawaiian for "Star in the Sky"), a parakeet who thinks she runs the household.

Since 1987 Vicki has been involved in Spotlight Starman International, an organization dedicated to promoting socially and environmentally conscious television. She's been Co-Editor-in-Chief of its newsletterzine Blue Lights since 1991.

Vicki is a member of the prestigious writing group Women Writing the West.