Laura Resau is the award-winning author of nine highly acclaimed young adult and children’s books, including The Lightning Queen, Tree of Dreams, What the Moon Saw, Red Glass, Star in the Forest (film-optioned), The Queen of Water (with María Virginia Farinango), the forthcoming Stand as Tall as the Trees: How an Amazonian Community Protected the Rain Forest (with Patricia Gualinga, Summer 2023), and Virch (Fall 2023).Laura draws inspiration from her time abroad as a cultural anthropologist and ESL teacher. She enjoys collaborating with women from Ecuador and Mexico to share their stories and celebrate their voices. Loved by kids and adults, her novels have garnered seventeen starred reviews and many honors, including the IRA YA Fiction Award, the Américas Award, five Colorado Book Awards, spots on “best-of” booklists from Oprah, School Library Journal, the American Library Association, Bank Street, and more. Resau's writing has been called "vibrant, large-hearted" (Publishers' Weekly on Red Glass) and "powerful, magical" (Booklist on What the Moon Saw). Resau lives with her family in Fort Collins, Colorado and donates a portion of her royalties to Indigenous rights organizations in Latin America.