Naomi Wood was born and raised in Congo (formerly Zaire). After years of feeling apologetic about her taste in books, she suddenly has been caught up in the popular-culture vanguard, which astonishes her. She teaches children’s and adolescent literature and Victorian studies at Kansas State University, where she is an associate professor of English. She has published articles on a range of fantasy and magic realist authors including George MacDonald, Lucy Lane Clifford, Charles Kingsley, C. S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, Virginia Hamilton and others.