Stephanie Parkyn grew up writing stories from an early age in a book-loving family in Christchurch, New Zealand. She had a rewarding career as an environmental scientist, but is now an historical fiction author with a love of travel, art and nature. She is curious about the human motivations behind the events of history and aims to illuminate women's experiences in her writing. After ten years living in Australia, she has returned to New Zealand and writes from her home overlooking the sea in Coromandel Peninsula. Stephanie's first novel, Into the World, was published to wide acclaim in 2017 and longlisted for the Tasmania Book Prize. Josephine's Garden, based on the true story of the woman who became Napoleon Bonaparte's Empress of France, was published in 2019. The Freedom of Birds is her third novel.