​When Shina Reynolds was young, she loved riding a horse through wide-open Nebraskan fields, her imagination leading the way. Now living in the city, she creates flying horses in her mind and writes about them instead.

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She wrote her first two books in her sixth-grade English class, the second of which won an award at the Nebraska Young Author’s Conference.

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Shina earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating with honors in art history and with a minor in anthropology, but she couldn’t resist the call to create stories of her own. Before writing her debut novel, she worked in acting, filmmaking, singing and songwriting, modeling, and photography—creative pursuits that continue to influence her storytelling.

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Her debut novel, A Light in the Sky, a young adult fantasy, has won twelve awards to date, including the Gold Medal for Teen Fiction in the 2022 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.

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In addition to writing novels, Shina is an independent filmmaker, developing and producing her own screenplays under the name Shina Stearns, where she brings her storytelling to life on screen as a writer, director, and actor.

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Shina resides in Texas with her husband and daughter, where she spends most of the year trying to stay cool and imagining she lives in Ireland. When she’s not writing or working on film projects, she enjoys movie nights on the family “super couch,” reading (mostly fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian, or non-fiction), exploring the outdoors, and swimming.