Anna Marie Nolan was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, on December 6, 1898. She attended New Mexico Highlands University studying English. On August 6, 1919, Anna married Thomas Patrick Clark. Their only child, Thomas Patrick Jr., was later killed in World War II.

After teaching English at Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico, Clark began a twenty-five-year career with the United States government's schools for Native American children. In her work, Clark became alarmed by the lack of instructional material in the students' own language and connected with their Native American culture. As a result, Clark began writing her own materials, resulting in a series of books:  Little Herder in Spring  (1940),  The Pine Ridge Porcupine  (1941),  Young Hunter of Picuris  (1943),  Singing Sioux Cowboy Reader  (1947), and  Little Navajo Herder  (1951). Many of these books were bilingual, featuring both the English and various Native American translations.

During the 1940s, Clark also supervised the production of materials in Central and South America for the Institute of Inter-American Affairs. This experience led her to write  Magic Money  (1950),  Looking-for-Something  (1952), and the 1953 Newbery Medal winner,  Secret of the Andes .

During the 1950s and 1960s, Clark worked at the Intermountain Indian School in Brigham City, Utah. It was while she working there that she wrote  Blue Canyon Horse  (1955). Between 1930-1960, Clark regularly published stories in the  New Mexico Magazine , which became the basis for We Made This Land , which was subsequently published as,  These Were the Valiant , Calvin Horn Publisher Inc, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 1969 (Book Collection 16, C-34). Ann Nolan Clark died in 1995.

Source: University of Southern Mississippi, archive collection DG 0188: