Atwater Rhodes was born in 1984 to Susan Atwater-Rhodes, a vice principal of Acton-Boxborough Regional High School and William Rhodes, a public policy consultant. Atwater-Rhodes's parents encouraged her to read early on. She grew up in Concord, Massachusetts.

Amongst her influences are Christopher Pike's The Last Vampire, Anne Rice, and other vampire books and movies.

In her early years and as the "teen successor to Anne Rice", Atwater-Rhodes wrote her first novel at the age of thirteen. At the time, she said she had over a dozen stories in various stages sitting on her shelves.

In middle school, Atwater-Rhodes was being questioned by an English teacher who remembered her older sister when a girl she knew proceeded to brag that Atwater-Rhodes was trying to get a book published. As it turns out the English teacher was also a literary agent and asked to read some of her work and later to represent her.

Two months later, on her fourteenth birthday, Amelia received a phone call telling her that Bantam Doubleday Dell had accepted her manuscript, White Wine, for publication. Her agent, Tom Hart, said it was "the fastest sale [he] ever had." White Wine would later be published when Amelia was fifteen as In the Forests of the Night.

Atwater-Rhodes graduated Concord-Carlisle High in 2001, a year early. She completed her junior and senior years in one year. Amelia graduated magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts with a double-major in English and psychology. She has considered attending Northwestern University for her MAT. She has in the past said she wants to be a teacher.

On February 26 and 27, 2009, she announced on her blog that she is engaged to her partner of two years, Mandi.

She has been featured in Seventeen, JUMP* Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The New Yorker, The Rosie O'Donnell Show and CBS This Morning. Several of her novels have been ALA Quick Picks for Young Adults; Hawksong was The School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and Voice of Youth Advocates Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Selection.

Amelia operates, codes, and participates actively in her own website, Nyeusigrube.com. The name translates in the language of her characters as "Den of Shadows." The site has a large collection of information on her world, characters, books, a blog she updates, and a message board with over 1100 users and 9000 articles (August 2007). The site still has several "Coming Soon" areas and has for several years.

• Amelia's books often have misunderstood, quiet, lonesome protagonists (Demon in My View, Persistence of Memory, Midnight Predator) who often have supernatural abilities along with a tough exterior and interior.

• Amelia's protagonists are usually not pristine and clean of all evil traits. They usually have had difficult or unpredictable pasts (Midnight Predator, Falcondance, Wolfcry, Demon in My View, Wyvernhail.)

• The antagonists are often extremely violent, and also possess supernatural powers. They are usually politically powerful in some way. They also think highly of themselves and have "short fuses." A prime example of this would be Jeshickah from Midnight Predator, or Fala from Demon in My View.

• Amelia often describes architecture and art in her work (Wolfcry, Persistence of Memory.)

• Characters are often nonchalant about death and usually end up in a complicated romance by the story's end (Demon in My View, Hawksong, Wolfcry, Falcondance, Persistence of Memory, Shattered Mirror.)

• In her vampire novels, there is almost always a strong-willed, independent human that becomes a vampire by the story's end and feel much better, as if they finally belong in the world.

• Atwater-Rhodes has stated that many of the vampires in her canon are bisexual, having grown tired over the centuries of being romantically involved with a single gender.

Novels

• 2008 Persistence of Memory
• 2010 Token of darkness
• 2011 All Just Glass

Den of Shadows

• 1999 In the Forests of the Night
• 2000 Demon in My View
• 2001 Shattered Mirror
• 2002 Midnight Predator

The Kiesha'ra Series

• 2003 Hawksong
• 2004 Snakecharm
• 2005 Falcondance
• 2006 Wolfcry
• 2007 Wyvernhail

Compilations

• 2009 The Den of Shadows Quartet*
• 2010 The Shapeshifters: The Kiesha'ra of the Den of Shadows

*Contains: In the Forests of the Night, Demon in My View, Shattered Mirror, and Midnight Predator