G. Bennett Humphrey, MD, PhD, completed his graduate studies in medicine and biochemistry at the University of Chicago. Following the events of this book, he retrained in pediatrics, with oncology and hematology as his subspecialties. He taught pediatric oncology at a number of universities, including as a visiting professor in Japan, Europe, and the United States.
Over his career Humphrey has written numerous articles and chapters and has edited several pediatric oncology books. In 2013 his chapbook entitled The Magpie Cried, containing poems about his youth, was published. That year he was named Senior Poet Laureate of Colorado. Three short stories from this book have been published previously, two by Whispering Angel Press and the other by Johns Hopkins University Press. Humphrey currently splits time between his apartment in Boulder, Colorado, and a cabin in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at ninety-three hundred feet, just north of the New Mexico border.