Polly Ho-Yen was born in Northampton and brought up in Buckinghamshire. She studied English at Birmingham University before working in publishing and as a teacher. Her first novel, Boy in the Tower, published in July 2014 by Random House Children’s Publishers, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. She now writes full-time and lives on a boat, mostly in London, with her husband and a great many (free-range) spiders.