Melanie Finn was born and raised in Kenya until age 11, when she moved with her family to Connecticut. After studying journalism at NYU, she worked as a freelance journalist and screenwriter for twenty years, living and working in six different countries. In 2004, her first novel, Away From You was published to international acclaim. The following year, she and her husband, the wildlife filmmaker Matt Aeberhard, moved to a remote region of Tanzania to make DisneyNature's beautiful, haunting flamingo epic, The Crimson Wing. During the filming, Melanie became the medic to the local Masai community and established The Natron Healthcare Project. Her second novel, The Gloaming, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2016, finalist for the Vermont Book Award and The Guardian's "Not the Booker" Prize. In 2018 her novel The Underneath was released to great acclaim. She now lives on a hill in Vermont with Matt, their twin daughters, three Tanzanian mutts and two very old horses.