Ardath Frances Hurst was born on February 20, 1930 in Timpson, Texas. From the age of 17 she managed her father's dairy for ten years while educating herself in languages and poetic forms. In 1957 she opened a bookstore in Nacogdoches and there she met her future husband, Joe Mayhar. They were married in 1958 and have four sons, two from his previous marriage. They lived for awhile in Houston, Texas then moved to Salem, Oregon, where Ardath worked as a proofreader for the Capital Journal from 1968 to 1975. They returned to Nacogdoches County, living near Chireno, and operated a broiler farm until it was destroyed by fire in 1978. From 1979 to 1980 Ardath was a proofreader for the Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel, then she left to become a full-time writer. After thirty years of writing and publishing poetry including a chapbook, Journey to an Ending, in 1965, she turned to fiction in 1973. Her first novel to be published, How the Gods Wove in Kyrannon, was released in 1979 and quickly succeeded by The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn (1980), Soul-Singer of Tyrnos (1981), Warlock's Gift (1982), Runes of the Lyre (1982), Golden Dream: A Fuzzy Odyssey (1982), and The Absolutely Perfect Horse, co-authored by Marylois Dunn (1983). She has other books under contract or in negotiation and several have gone into more than one edition. Most of the above works are science fiction/fantasy but she has also written westerns and occult fiction.