Mira Z. Amiras is an anthropologist, author, and award-winning filmmaker. She was raised on her mother’s accounts of the Inquisition and Holocaust, her father’s tales of the creation and beauty of the universe, and her grandparents’ foods, folklore and music of ancient Sefarad. Mira has lived, studied, and traveled throughout the Middle East and North Africa, camped out 7,000 miles through Africa, and traveled overland from Istanbul to the Nepalese border. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and is Professor Emerita of Comparative Religion and Middle East Studies at San Jose State University. Mira is past president of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, and was a member of the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association. She lives in San Francisco with her family.

Multi-award-winning illustration team Chantelle and Burgen Thorne are eclectic bookworms who delight in the magic of stories. Quick-draw, deft wielders of the digital brush, they have many titles out in the world. Now they're going ultra-edgy and working on their first author-illustrated picture book as well as a graphic novel—whoo-hoo!! They live in the countryside with their two girly dogs.