Em Bailey is an Australian writer living in Germany with her partner and daughter. Em used to be a new-media designer for a children's television production house and is now a full-time author. Shift was her first novel for young adults, a psychological thriller that published internationally to great acclaim and won the teens' choice Gold Inky Award in Australia and was shortlisted for a number of other awards, including CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers and the Aurealis YA Fiction Award. She is also a best-selling author of junior and middle-grade books for children, written under a different name. Her second, and much-anticipated novel for young adults, The Special Ones, publishes in 2016. When she's not writing, Em is generally getting lost, losing stuff, reading, hanging out with her friends and family, and listening to Radiolab podcasts. Like Olive, she doesn't like leggings that look like jeans, but has no problem with tofu schnitzels.