Michaela Riley

Michaela Riley writes at the intersection of myth and memory — where the past doesn't stay buried, and survival always costs something.

Based in the mountains and forests of Virginia, she has spent years tracing the threads of her ancestral heritage through genealogical research and the winding trails she hikes with her German Shepherd, Morrigan, and terrier mix, Carlos. What she found in that pursuit — the patterns of sacrifice, identity fracture, and hard-won endurance that repeat across generations — became the architecture of The Witch's Rebirth series.

Her fiction does not borrow from mythology. It excavates it. The death-rebirth cycle at the heart of Merona's story emerges directly from Michaela's confrontation with what her ancestors endured, and what they passed forward — whether they meant to or not. The Virginia trails she walks are not background. They are the labyrinth.

An 11-time award-winning author, Michaela also writes dark suspense and criminal thriller fiction under the same unflinching moral lens — most recently in Critics' Requiem and Dark Scales of Justice.