[2] She is known for her Enchanted Forest Chronicles series for young adults, which was voted number 84 in NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels list.

[2][4] She was a founding member of The Scribblies, along with Pamela Dean, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Steven Brust and Nate Bucklin, in January 1980, "to which [she] belonged for five extremely productive years.

In 2009, Wrede donated her archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.

The actual chronological order of the books is Caught in Crystal, The Raven Ring, Shadow Magic, Daughter of Witches, and The Harp of Imach Thyssel.

The omnibus edition of Shadow Magic is a revised one; the writing is significantly different from that in the original, and reflects her greater experience as a writer.

with Caroline Stevermer The authors tell these stories from the first-person perspectives of cousins Kate and Cecelia (and, in the third book, two additional characters), who recount their adventures in magic and polite society.

Book One covers her childhood, from the age of five (when her parents move west to the edge of the expanding American frontier) to shortly after her eighteenth birthday.