Leora Freedman was born in New York City and grew up in Connecticut. She is the author of an award-winning first novel, The Ivory Pomegranate, as well as short stories which have appeared in a variety of literary magazines. Freedman spent many years living and writing in the Arizona desert, the wilds of British Columbia, and in Jerusalem, before settling in Toronto, where she now lives with her family. She teaches at the University of Toronto and at San Joaquin Delta College in California.