Ruyan Meng was born and educated in China. After the Tiananmen Square protests, she fled to the United States in 1990. Her first book, Only the Cat Knows, won the Red Hen Press Fiction Award in 2020 and was published in 2022. Her second book, The Morgue Keeper, was released on October 15, 2025 by 7.13 Press and was longlisted for the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Her third book, One Is Three, won the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction in 2025 and will be published in spring 2027. She lives in Frisco, TX.