Lea Carpenter graduated summa cum laude phi beta kappa from Princeton and has an MBA from Harvard. She was one of the original editors at Francis Ford Coppola's literary magazine, Zoetrope, and later served as Deputy Publisher for The Paris Review.

She lives in New York with her husband and their two sons. She has served in various capacities at the New York Public Library for over fifteen years, where she assists with new programming initiatives.

This is her first novel.