Hayford Peirce was born in Maine, in 1942, and attended Exeter, Stanford, and Harvard. He moved to Tahiti in 1964 and lived there until 1987. At various times he was the part owner of a button factory, a garden center, a 1-hour laundry, and a computer business. He began writing in 1974 with science-fiction sales to Analog, Galaxy, and Omni, then had a few mystery shorts in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. In 1987 he moved to San Francisco and became a full-time writer. There he published three science-fiction novels via Tor. In 1992 he resumed writing short fiction and has had a number of stories in Analog and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Currently he lives in Tucson.