Safia Elhillo is the author of the Printz Honor Book Bright Red Fruit, which was also a CALIBA Golden Poppy Award finalist and a Kirkus Prize finalist, and was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, SLJ, Kirkus Reviews, and the New York Public Library. Her debut YA novel-in-verse, Home Is Not a Country, was longlisted for the National Book Award and received a Coretta Scott King Author Honor and an Arab American Book Award. Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and listed in Forbes Africa's 2018 "30 Under 30." She lives in Los Angeles.