Rudyard Kipling was born in 1865 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. When he was six years old, he and his sister were sent to England for school. As a young adult, he returned to India and worked as a journalist. He married an America woman and moved to the United States. While living in a cottage in Vermont, he wrote The Jungle Book for his baby daughter. He returned to England and, in 1907, was the first English writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in 1936.

Karuna Riazi is a born and raised New Yorker, with a loving, large extended family and the rather trying experience of being the eldest sibling in her particular clan. She holds a BA in English Literature from Hofstra University, and is an online diversity advocate, blogger, and educator. She is the author of The Gauntlet and The Battle, both from Simon & Schuster's Salaam Reads imprint. Karuna is fond of tea, Korean dramas, writing about tough girls forging their own paths toward their destinies, and baking new delectable treats for friends and family to relish.