Andrea Torrey Balsara has published books for young children up to young adults, sometimes working as a writer, sometimes as an illustrator, and sometimes as both. She is a graduate of the Institute of Children’s Literature, and has taken at least a million art workshops, but she's primarily a self-taught artist. She has an eclectic background, having worked as an American Sign Language interpreter, a school bus driver, and a zombie office worker. Back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, she even attended theatre school in London, England. She lives in an old Victorian manor house with her husband and family, and their two dogs, two cats, and two hives of bees (the bees live outside), where she can often be found in her cold attic of a workroom, pretending to be the heroine from Jane Eyre as she writes and draws with frozen fingers.