Catherine Raphael grew up in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts/metalsmithing. She worked as a jeweler in Pennsylvania for sixteen years, during which time she also traveled to Arizona to do construction work on Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri’s “City of the Future.” She is one of the founding mothers of the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania, and she has served on the boards of the Ms. Foundation for Women and the Women Donors Network and volunteered with other progressive women’s rights organizations. In 2014, she attended a master class at Hedgebrook, and the friendships she made there coalesced into the Roving Writers, her writing group. Pre-COVID, she was a regular attendee at the Iceland Writers Retreat in Reykjavik, Iceland. Her stories have won prizes in Writer Advice and the Ageless Authors competition, and her work has been short-listed in Women On Writing and long-listed in Bumble Bee. This is her first novel. She currently resides in Pittsburgh, PA.