Balaka Basu is an assistant professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she works on children's literature and the digital humanities. She holds a B.A. in English from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center, CUNY. She has been presenting papers at the L.M. Montgomery Institute biennial conference since 2012. Her first co-edited collection, Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers, was named best edited book of the year by the Children's Literature Association in 2015.