Elissa R. Sloan grew up in Houston, Texas. Born to a Japanese immigrant mother and Jewish American father, Elissa understands the importance of representation in stories and media, and cites Claudia Kishi as one of her young heroines. Elissa graduated from The University of Texas at Austin, concentrating on WWII history and English. When she’s not writing, Elissa is also an artist and professional photographer, spending the last decade shooting weddings for a living. Though she’s not a gossip in real life, she loves to keep up with celebrity dirt; her debut novel, The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes, was borne from that interest. She currently lives in Austin with her husband and three cats in a house with a rolling library ladder.