Born in 1975, Kristel Thornell grew up in Sydney, Australia, and the Blue Mountains. She studied French and Italian at the University of Sydney and spent a year in Italy, researching the author Giorgio Bassani and then teaching English as a foreign language. She has lived in North America for much of the last ten years, in Mexico, the United States, and Canada, where she completed an M.A. in English at the University of New Brunswick. She has also taught Italian language and literature, French and Spanish, and has published reviews, poetry, and fiction in a range of journals. She now lives in upstate New York.