Shannon Moffett was born in Evanston, Illinois, went to New York University as a theatre major, then to Stanford University for medical school, where she wrote The Three-Pound Enigma: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock its Mysteries (Algonquin Books, 2006). Now an emergency physician, she currently lives in Shanghai, China, with her mom, her husband, and her twin daughters, without whom she’d never have learned how to say “lost hamster” in Chinese. Her current project is a recounting of the girls’ first year in a local Chinese elementary school.