Mary Ann Shaffer was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and graduated from the University of Miami. She married Carl Richard Shaffer in 1956, with whom she had two daughters.

Annie Barrows was born in 1952 in San Diego, California. She is also known as a children’s book author and co-wrote The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society with Mary Ann Shaffer.

She studied English Literature and later Medieval History at the University of California, Berkeley. She worked as an editor before becoming a full-time writer, and she is married with two daughters.