Morgana Bridget Gallaway was born on a full moon in March, 1983. She grew up in Portland, Oregon, and learned to love books, bake cookies, and shoot guns. Woefully unpopular in high school, she overcame her dislike of social events to study at (and graduate from) the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where attendance at charity balls was just as important as lectures and exams.

Armed with a double degree in geography and international relations, she set forth to find a job, only to discover that no one was interested in her knowledge of world capitals, or her skills in navigating cocktail parties. It was then that she decided (on a suggestion from her mother) that she would write novels.

Inspired by her previous travels through the Middle East and Africa - and motivated by the idea of living on a few dollars a day - she moved to India and wrote her first novel, THE NIGHTINGALE. Braving monsoons, over-friendly shopkeepers, intestinal disease, snow leopards, and immigration police, she persevered and emerged twenty pounds lighter, with a manuscript in hand.

Ever since, she has been disbelieving of her good fortune at being published and living in England and Arizona. She is already hard at work on her next project.