Julia Cunningham was born in Spokane, Washington, and raised in New York. She is the author of twenty children's books, including Burnish Me Bright, which was a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year in 1970; and Drop Dead, which won a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1972. At the age of twelve, she fell in love with poetry. She has been through many hurts and sadness, but she believes that poems healed and helped her. They also made her into a grateful writer. She also sees poetry as freedom because it allows you to use your imagination and to create your own world. After many years of writing poetry, she encourages readers everywhere with these words: "I can only ask that you . . . walk with your words into these secret, mysterious, and magic places where poems lead you."