Ann Blades was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has spent most of her life in Vancouver. As a child, she attended several schools, including one in England, where she was encouraged to paint at age eleven. Subsequently, she continued to paint with watercolours with no formal art training. After obtaining a teaching certificate from the University of British Columbia, she taught at Mile 18 in northeastern British Columbia, where she wrote and illustrated her first book, Mary of Mile 18 in 1971. This book won Blades a Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children award. In 1978, A Salmon for Simon, written by Betty Waterton, and illustrated by Blades, was published, earning Blades the Canada Council's Children's Literature Prize for Illustration and the Amelia Francis Howard-Gibbon Illustrator's Award. Although she trained as a registered nurse in the mid-1970s, Blades has worked as an illustrator of children's books and an artist full-time since 1980, winning the Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award in 1986.