Photo: Morgan Doremus

Award winning, bestselling author, actress and playwright Leanna Renee Hieber grew up in rural Ohio inventing ghost stories.  Graduating with a BFA in Theatre from Miami University, a focus in the Victorian Era and a scholarship to study in London helped set the course for her Strangely Beautiful series. The Gothic, dramatic, historic, spiritual and paranormal are the primary forces in her lyrical, eerie, atmospheric fiction.  While performing in the regional theatre circuit she adapted works of 19th Century literature for the professional stage and her one-act plays such as Favorite Lady garnered national attention and continue to be produced around the country.

She hit the fantasy fiction scene with her novella Dark Nest which won the 2009 Prism Award for excellence in Futuristic, Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. 

Her critically acclaimed debut novel, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker is the first in her Strangely Beautiful series of ghostly, Gothic Victorian Fantasy novels published by Dorchester Publishing and landed on Barnes & Noble's mass market and overall Bestseller List. The book was named one of the Top Ten Books of 2009 by Beyond Her Book Publishers Weekly readers poll, an honour repeated on over 13 other Fantasy and Romance book review blogs. The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker (Strangely Beautiful #2) releases in April 2010. A novella in the series (Strangely Beautiful #2.5) will release October 2010 in A Midwinter Fantasy.

Represented by Nicholas Roman Lewis, Leanna is a member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), Horror Writers Association (HWA) and the International Thriller Writers (ITW).  She is proud to be a co-founder of Lady Jane's Salon Reading Series in New York along with authors Hope Tarr, Maya Rodaleand Ron Hogan of Beatrice.com.  The Salon showcases talent in the sub-genres of romance and women's fiction and supports charities for women in need.

A member of Actors Equity Association (AEA), the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), Leanna works often in television. 

When not writing or on set, she's a devotee of ghost stories and Goth clubs, adventuring about her adopted hometown of New York City, where she resides with her real-life hero and beloved rescued lab rabbit Persebunny.