Allison Saft was born in a Philadelphia blizzard and has been venturing west ever since. After receiving her MA in English Literature from Tulane University, she moved from the Gulf Coast to the West Coast, where she spends her free time hiking the redwoods and practicing aerial silks. She currently lives and writes on Stanford University's campus. Her academic interests include the economics of Gothic novels and obstetrics and gynaecology in Early Modern literature (yes, really!). Saft is the author of critically acclaimed and eerie romantic fantasies, Down Comes the Night and A Far Wilder Magic. Her debut, Down Comes the Night, was a top ten pick for the American Bookseller Association's Indie Next List in spring 2021. It also received an Earphones Award from AudioFile Magazine and starred reviews from School Library Journal and Shelf Awareness. Her second novel, A Far Wilder Magic, will release from Hachette Children's (UK) and Wednesday Books (US) in March 2022. Her short fiction will appear in The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror (Page Street Publishing, 2022), and her nonfiction can be found on Tor.com. An alumna of Author Mentor Match, Saft is passionate about lifting up other writers. She has served as a mentor in Author Mentor Match (Round 7) and Pitch Wars (2020 and 2021) and currently freelances as a writing coach. In a past life, she wrote portfolio performance commentaries for a mutual fund company.