Cristy Burne has New Zealand and Australian citizenship. She has lived in Japan, where she worked as a teacher. During this time in Japan she became fascinated with Japanese folklore and the supernatural yokai - demons - which are very much a part of Japanese culture, but little known outside Japan. Burne has spent most of her career as a science writer, and has worked for a computing network designed to solve global problems. She won the Voices on the Coast Youth Literature Award for emerging writers, in Queensland. Burne lives in Perth, Western Australia.