Diana Jean Gabaldon born on
January 11, 1952 in
Arizona, (
U.S.A.). Her father was from
New Mexico and her mother's family from
Yorkshire (
England); her great-grandfather immigrated to Arizona from England in the 1860's.
Gabaldon grew up in
Flagstaff, Arizona. She has received three degrees from two different institutions: B.S. in
Zoology from
Northern Arizona University, 1970-1973; M.S. in
Marine Biology from the
University of California, San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
1973-1975. Her research topic was, "Agonistic Interactions of Hermit Crabs." and Ph.D in
Ecology from Northern Arizona University,
1975-1978. Dissertation: "Nest Site Selection in Pinyon Jays,
Gymnorhynchus cyanocephalus)." She has also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Northern Arizona University, in 2007. In addition, Gabaldon Hall, a dormitory on the campus of Northern Arizona University, is named after her father, Tony Gabaldon. Gabaldon currently lives in
Scottsdale, Arizona with her husband,
Doug Watkins; they have three adult children.
Gabaldon's first fiction efforts were posted on the
CompuServe writers forum. She was an active member of an online community, and posted parts of her unfinished novel,
Outlander, to strengthen her points in an argument with another poster. One of the people who read her post was a science fiction writer. He was impressed, and introduced her to his agent. This favorable feedback persuaded her to finish and publish the first book in the
Outlander series, which later expanded to six books (one or two more are planned). The stories center around a time-travelling 20th-century nurse (Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser) and her 18th-century Scottish husband (James Alexander Malcolm McKenzie Fraser), and are located in
Scotland, France, the
West Indies and
America. The Lord John Series is a
spinoff from the Outlander books, as it centers on a secondary character from the original series.
Note: Diana did not take her husband's name after they married, "My husband was mildly put out that I refused to take his name when we got married. I told him, though, that I'd been spelling "Gabaldon" for people for twenty-five years, and I was attached to it."
