Maria Valenzuela Frangakis was born in a dusty village in Mexico. After completing her chemistry degree, she attended graduate school in the U.S. and worked as a research scientist in various academic and pharmaceutical labs for over twenty years, publishing her work in various scientific journals and raising her three sons. Later, she earned her M.B.A. and founded a biotech consulting company that she still manages. Her fiction has appeared in Typehouse and Adelaide Literary Magazines. She currently lives in Durham, NC.