Paullina Simons was born in Leningrad in 1963. As a child she emigrated to Queens, New York, and attended colleges in Long Island. Then she moved to England and attended Essex University, before returning to America. She lives in New York, with her husband and children.
Aven Shore lives in rural Eastern Canada in an off-grid tiny house she built on her large woodlot. Her lifelong (and voracious) appetite for reading and learning is constantly fueled by reading for a living, and she has narrated over 200 audiobooks.