When Rylant was eight years old, she and her mother moved to Beaver, West Virginia. They lived in a small apartment near the railroad tracks. Rylant was happy in Beaver. She remembers having fun riding bikes and playing Tin Can Alley. Rylant doesn't remember being read to as a child, and didn't do much reading herself because there weren't many books available. There were no libraries, bookstores, or money to buy books. Rylant read Archie and Jughead comic books and Nancy Drew books. When she got older, she resorted to paperback romance novels. It wasn't until she went to college that she began to read literature.
In 1975, Rylant received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Morris Harvey College (now known as the University of Charleston) and, in 1976, she received a Master of Arts degree from Marshall University in West Virginia. Because Rylant thoroughly enjoyed books and reading, she thought she would become an English teacher, but after finishing college she couldn't find a teaching job. She worked as a waitress and then got a job at the Cabell County Public Library in Huntington, West Virginia, in the children's department. Until that time, Rylant had not been exposed to children's books. Her job as a librarian changed her life. Rylant loved reading children's books and within a short time she began to write children's stories. Her first book, When I Was Young in the Mountains (1982), was accepted for publication in 1978, just two months after she had submitted it to a publisher in New York. That same year, Rylant gave birth to her son, Nate (she had been married and divorced). Rylant and her son moved to Ohio, and, in 1982, she received a Master of Library Science degree from Kent State University. Rylant has taught English as a part-time lecturer at various universities.
Writing comes easily for Rylant. She writes picture books in one sitting. Her longer books take her about six months to write. She sometimes goes months without writing anything and then may "sense" a story in her mind, and simply sit down and write it. Many of Rylant's books are connected to her childhood and the West Virginia environment in which she grew up. Authors that have become role models for Rylant include Donald Hall, William Maxwell, Harper Lee, Fred Chappell, and James Agee in particular.
