Ann Miles Sievers is a native Midwesterner who lives in Glenview, Illinois, with her husband, Tom, two rescue cats, and a rescue painted turtle. She is also the proud grandmother of four.

Ann’s connection with animals is rooted in her family. Her father was born in 1901 on a farm in Iowa, while her mother came from Aurora, Minnesota, an iron-ore mining town. Their love and knowledge of animals had a lasting influence on Ann and helped shape her own affection for animals and birds.

The inspiration for The Food Lady came directly from the birds and woodland animals that visit Ann’s backyard. Her husband, Tom, was the one who first began calling her “the Food Lady,” joking that the neighborhood deer were looking for her. The nickname stayed and eventually became the name of her first children’s picture book.

Ann is also an artist who works in oil and acrylic. Many of the illustrations for The Food Lady began with her own original paintings, which she shared with her publisher. Those artworks became part of the development of the finished digital illustrations in collaboration with Austin Macauley’s illustrator.

Her second published picture book, The Food Lady and Bucky, continues the same woodland world and was inspired by another real encounter involving an older deer named Bucky. The story brings back familiar animal characters while exploring Christmas, sharing, kindness, aging, and caring for someone who needs help.

Ann has continued writing within The Food Lady world. Her additional stories include The Food Lady and the Hawk, which brings back characters such as Rusty, B.B., Jerome, and Lilly while introducing new characters including Leggy, a garden spider, and Killer Jr., a Cooper’s Hawk.

Other stories in development include The Food Lady and the Poisoned and The Food Lady Goes Away. In the latter, the Food Lady’s husband enters the story as the “Food Man,” who eventually becomes the “No Food Man.”

Writing is also a family effort for Ann. Her daughter Maria, a high school English teacher, helps review and edit her stories.

Through The Food Lady books, Ann continues to draw inspiration from the animals, personalities, and everyday encounters found close to home, turning a real backyard and its many visitors into a growing world of stories for children and families.