Frances Figart edits Smokies Life Journal and directs the Creative Team at Smokies Life. Camilla and the Caterpillars is her third book for young readers, joining Mabel Meets a Black Bear (2023), and A Search for Safe Passage (2021), recognized as Publication of the Year by the Public Lands Alliance in 2022. Frances grew up at a summer camp in Eastern Kentucky where her mother called their home Hickory Hill. She now lives on a small piece of land in the Cherokee National Forest north of Asheville, North Carolina, where she once chanced to meet a Hickory Horned Devil in her backyard under a native walnut tree.