Anna Godbersen was born in Berkeley, California and moved to New York to attend Barnard College. After graduating she worked in the literary department of Esquire magazine. Her debut novel was the first installment of the New York Times bestselling LUXE series for young adults. Her subsequent novels reflect an enduring interest in historical fiction and coming-of-age narratives. She holds an MFA in fiction from New York University, where she was the Axinn Foundation Writer-in-Residence and NYU Veterans Writing Workshop Fellow. She has taught creative writing at NYU, the Bard Prison Initiative, the Hotchkiss School, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, and Catapult Classes. She has written on artists, writers, and creatives for Departures, Upstate Diary, and Liber. Kiki Smith has been known since the 1980s for her multidisciplinary art exploring embodiment and the natural world. She uses a broad variety of materials to continuously expand and evolve a body of work that includes sculpture, printmaking, photography, drawing, and textiles. Smith has been the subject of many solo exhibitions worldwide, including over twenty-five museum exhibitions. Her work has appeared in five Venice Biennales, including the 2017 edition. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2017 the Royal Academy of Arts, London, made her an Honorary Royal Academician. In 2006, Smith was recognized by Time as one of the “Time 100: The People Who Shape Our World.”