Nancy Forbes was born in Ridgewood, New Jersey in 1952. She earned a BA degree in Spanish from the University of Virginia, an MA in Spanish Literature from NYU, and later on, a BS and MA in Physics from Columbia University. She has served as a Contributing Editor for The Industrial Physicist of The American Institute of Physics and for IEEE's Computing in Science and Engineering. She has lived in Turin, Italy and in New York City and, for the last 23 years, in Fairfax, VA. She currently works for the US Department of Defense.