Born in Lansing, Michigan, Gabrielle Burton has a BA in Psychology from Marygrove College in Detroit, and it wasn’t long before her interest in human behavior led her to put pen to paper. In 1972, Burton’s non-fiction book, I’m Running Away from Home but I’m Not Allowed to Cross the Street, a comedic primer on the Women's Movement, was the first book published by KNOW, Inc. and was subsequently picked up by Avon. It launched her into the national discussion as a mother of five girls struggling with the problems of balancing parenting with other pursuits, or, as Burton put it: "keeping seven lives afloat at the expense of none."

Burton''s books share a commitment to exploring women's lives. Her first novel, Heartbreak Hotel (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1986), received the Maxwell Perkins Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer’s Award and was reprinted by the prestigious Dalkey Archive Press in 1999. Fay Weldon called the novel "a wild, manic, committed, exhilarating, wonderful work, which moves the reader from tears to outrage to delight to mirth at the turn of each anarchic page."

Her fascination with the Donner Party inspired her to physically retrace the Donner Trail with her five daughters and her husband in 1977. Burton’s memoir, Searching for Tamsen Donner (University of Nebraska, 2009), chronicles this journey. Combining Donner history with the rich travel tale of a modern family going west, she explores the struggle between love and work, between family and adventure, and the search to have them all. Tamsen Donner’s seventeen extant letters are collected and published for the first time in Searching for Tamsen Donner.

The desire to live a life fully while being a writer, wife, and mother drove Burton and her husband to create new ways of parenting and sharing household chores, as well as sharing adventure as a family. The pioneer spirit not only informs Burton's work on the Donner Party, but all of her writing, as well as her life. Burton and her husband (jazz musician, psychology professor, and actor Roger Burton) took extraordinary trips with their five children on shoestring budgets -- hitch-hiking through Alaska, camping while painstakingly researching the exact Donner Party route from Independence, MO to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, backpacking through southeast Asia for months, and living in Europe and Malaysia.

Burton also holds an MA in screenwriting from the American Film Institute. Her screenplay Manna from Heaven (MGM DVD) was produced by her daughters’ film production company, Five Sisters Productions. Her honors include the Mary Pickford Prize for screenwriting given by A.F.I., first prize in the Austin Film Festival’s screenwriting contest, and a Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times, Family Circle, Ms. magazine, and online at The Huffington Post. She is on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.

Burton currently lives with her husband in Venice, California and often works with her five daughters. Their most recent project was creating public service announcements against human trafficking in the U.S.