Mickey Hoffman was born in Chicago, and attended public schools where she acquired the strong suspicion that some of her teachers might be human. She wasn't able to prove this fanciful thinking until much later, when she became a high school teacher herself. Before landing in the halls of academia, she worked in a variety of jobs, including computer typesetting and wholesale frozen fish sales. The author is also a printmaker and painter and resides on the West Coast with her long suffering mate, eight marine aquariums and a very large cat. Education can be mysterious and deadly, or so she asserts in her thrillers.