An international citizen from a young age, NIOUCHA HOMAYOONFAR was born in Brussels to an Iranian father and French mother, spent her earliest years in Pittsburgh, and became a teenager in Tehran. Homayoonfar grew up caught between two worlds: a free and Western life lived indoors, and a repressive life lived outside the confines of the family home. The family finally left Iran when Nioucha was nearly 17 years old. In the U.S., she studied art history and Spanish at the University of Pittsburgh. She now lives in the Washington, D.C., area with her husband, author and journalist Stew Magnuson, and their two children.

Foreword writer FIROOZEH DUMAS is an Iranian writer and the author of the New York Times best-selling book Funny in Farsi. She was a finalist for the PEN/USA award in 2004 and a finalist in 2005 for an Audie Award for best audio book. Dumas was also the first Middle Eastern woman to become a finalist for the prestigious Thurber Prize for American Humor. In 2008 she published Laughing Without an Accent, also a New York Times best seller. And in 2016, she published her first book of middle grade fiction, It Ain't So Awful, Falafel. She speaks at hundreds of schools, conferences, and festivals.