Sylvia Nickels, daughter of a sharecropper, was born and grew up in rural Haralson County, Georgia before the family moved to the relatively more urban Villa Rica, in Carroll County. Second oldest of eight children, she feels they were somewhat sheltered from the hardships of the sharecropping lifestyle by a close family and loving parents and grandparents.

Eight Miles of Muddy Road, Sylvia's first book, is an account of the joys and sorrows of the limited cosmos she knew before slowly becoming aware of a wider world beyond farms and tiny rural towns.

An avid reader since childhood, Sylvia took early retirement from Sprint Corporation and committed to honing the writing she had pursued in her spare time. Her fiction stories have been published in print magazines, Communities and Futures, as well as the Northeast Community College literary magazine, Echoes and Images. Others have been accepted and published online in the ezines Orchard Press Mysteries, T-Zero, the Writers Ezine, Judas, and Shadowkeep.

Persimmon Memories, an essay based on recollections of her Georgia childhood, was published in the Adams Media anthology, Rocking Chair Reader-Coming Home in October 2004. Her essay, Scenic Route, appeared earlier this year in the Southern oriented ezine, Blue Magnolia, no longer published.