Ani­ta Abriel was born in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia. She received a BA in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture with a minor in Cre­ative Writ­ing from Bard Col­lege and attend­ed UC Berkeley’s Mas­ters in Cre­ative Writ­ing pro­gram. She lives in Cal­i­for­nia with her fam­i­ly and is the author of The Light After the War, which was inspired by her mother’s sto­ry of sur­vival dur­ing WWII.