Libby Moore earned a Master of Forestry from Yale University and went on to work as a forest ecologist in midcoast Maine. She was a Reiki practitioner and worked with life-force energy to offer healing and support to her clients. Libby and her husband settled on an old saltwater farm, where they raised three children. Every winter they watched birds from the kitchen window for Cornell University’s Project FeederWatch. She became a Reiki practitioner, led women’s spiritual retreats, and played a leading role in establishing the Red Canoe Foundation supporting youth access to wilderness opportunities, inspired by her childhood canoe trips. The River of Birds was Libby’s first book. It came to her in a dream, just like the dream of the story’s protagonist. She wrote it in 2005, well before her cancer diagnosis. She passed away in 2020, but her spirit lives on in the love she gave and felt everywhere.