Anika Fajardo was born in Colombia and raised in Minnesota. She is the author of a book about that experience, Magical Realism for Non-Believers: A Memoir of Finding Family (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), which was awarded Best Book (Nonfiction) of 2020 from City Pages and was a finalist for the 2020 Minnesota Book Award. Her debut middle-grade novel What If a Fish (Simon & Schuster, 2020) was awarded the 2021 Minnesota Book Award. Her next book for young readers, Meet Me Halfway (Simon & Schuster) will be published in fall 2022. Her writing for adults and children has appeared in numerous publications including Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction (Norton), We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (U of Minnesota Press), and Sky Blue Waters: Great Stories for Young Readers (U of Minnesota Press). Fajardo also wrote Encanto: A Tale of Three Sisters, the middle-grade tie-in novel for the Disney film Encanto. She has earned awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Loft Literary Center. When she is not writing, she teaches at Augsburg University’s MFA program. She lives with her family in the very literary city of Minneapolis.