Kiri Lightfoot is an NZ-based author and actor. She has worked as a scriptwriter in children's television and as an actor both for theatre and screen. She continues to work part-time in television and also runs poetry reading sessions in aged-care homes and hospitals with charity 'Active Arts'. Kiri worked for many years as a telephone counsellor with Youthline and as a volunteer mentor in an alternative education school. Bear is her first novel for young adults and was inspired by working with young people at this time. Kiri is now a mother of three school-aged children and lives in central Auckland. Her previous books are picture books: Ming's Iceberg, illustrated by Kimberly Andrews (Scholastic 2021) and Every Second Friday, illustrated by Ben Galbraith (Hodder Children's Books 2008), a shortlist in the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards 2009.