Vonda N. McIntyre was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the daughter of H. Neel and Vonda B. Keith McIntyre. She spent her early childhood on the east coast of the United States and in The Hague, Netherlands, before her family settled in Seattle in the early 1960s. She earned a BS with honors in biology from the University of Washington in 1970. That same year, she attended the Clarion Writers Workshop. McIntyre went on to do graduate work at University of Washington in genetics.