Sherrilyn Kenyon, known as Sherri, was born on 11 December 1965 in Columbus, Georgia, USA. She grew up in a large family with eight brothers and one sister. Her father left the family when she was eight, and her mother had to send her sons to live with relatives in Atlanta, Georgia, while she took care of her daughters because Sherri's older sister, Trish, has severe cerebral palsy. After 18 months, the girls moved to Atlanta with the rest of the family.

At 20, Sherri was devastated when her brother Buddy died. She is severely dyslexic, but even as a child, she knew she wanted to be a writer. Her first recognition for writing came when she won a contest in third grade with an essay about her mother for Mother's Day. At seven, she wrote and illustrated her first novel, a horror story about a girl who kills her brothers. At 14, she made her first professional sale and continued to write for school newspapers, yearbooks, local papers, and magazines throughout high school.

Sherri developed a "love of all things that go bump in the night" from her mother, who loved paranormal storylines and never censored what movies the young girl was allowed to watch. In high school, she started writing fantasy stories for herself. In the mid-1980s, when she was working for a small science fiction magazine called Cutting Edge, her boss asked her to write a long-running serial. She brought many of her favorite characters from her previous fantasies into one larger series, which was the genesis of the Hunter Legends world, later becoming the Dark-Hunters, Were-Hunters, and Dream-Hunters stories.

Sherri graduated with an interdisciplinary major combining Medieval History and language with Classical Studies. She had enough credits to earn minors in Philosophy, Psychology, and French, and obtained a certificate in Medieval Studies.

Sherri married young, and the couple moved to Richmond, Virginia. She struggled to find a job until a childhood friend mentioned that the magazine she was editing needed several articles written. Two years later, she sold her first book, quickly followed by five more. However, after the publication of her sixth novel, she struggled to get a writing contract. Her father died in February 1995, and she was unable to work due to a difficult pregnancy, with her baby spending six weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. Later that year, her mother was diagnosed with cancer, and Sherri became pregnant again, requiring hospitalization for most of the time. Once her second baby was born, she took a minimum wage job as a web designer while writing in her spare time, completing the manuscript for Fantasy Lover while in the hospital.

In 1997, she began developing a pirate novel under the pseudonym Kinley MacGregor, which was her great-grandmother's maiden name. Eventually, she found a publisher interested in vampire romances and sold her Hunters series.

Sherri has a passion for music and plays the guitar, flute, piano, and drums. She is also interested in martial arts and sword-fighting, having spent time as a sparring partner for a Golden Glove boxer. She has a collection of swords that fascinates many. Married with three sons, Sherri lives outside of Nashville, Tennessee, with her family and an assortment of pets.