Lori M. Lee (she/her) is the author of Pahua and the Soul Stealer, the predecessor to this book and winner of the 2022 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature. Lori was born in a village in the mountains of Laos, which her family was forced to escape when she was just an infant. They relocated to a refugee camp in Thailand refugee for a few years and moved permanently to the United States when she was three.