Megaera C. Lorenz was born in Little Rock, AR in 1984, but spent most of her childhood on Guam. The daughter of a geologist and a mathematician, Megaera broke from the family’s STEM tradition when she became obsessed with ancient Egypt as a child. She enrolled in college at the University of Guam at age 13 and eventually earned a Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. Over the years she has worked as a museum educator, an instructor of undergraduate and graduate-level Egyptology courses, a field archaeologist, and a professional tech writer and editor.

She has also been writing fiction and creating art for the sheer joy of it since early childhood. In addition to her love of Egyptology, Megaera is fascinated with early 20th-century American history and culture. She’s also a connoisseur of the strange and uncanny and is particularly interested in the history of the Spiritualist movement in America. These combined interests sparked the inspiration for her debut novel, The Shabti.

Megaera has lived in the Chicagoland area for nearly 20 years. She currently resides in St. Charles, IL. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys spending time with her family, experimenting with digital art, studying Yiddish, and coming up with increasingly bizarre and arcane in-jokes with her friends.