Maeve Friel was born in Northern Ireland and went to university in Dublin. After many years working and travelling in Spain, Italy and England, she now lives in a small village near Alicante (Spain). She has a son and a daughter. Apart from the Witch-in-Training series, she has published four novels for older readers, a book for young readers and a book of non-fiction, as well as featuring in many short story anthologies. She has been short-listed three times for the Irish Children's Book of the Year (the "Bisto"), has won a Bisto Merit Award, was twice nominated for the Reading Association of Ireland literary awards and won the Hennessy Literary Award. She has also had stories broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and RTE.