Rashin Kheiriyeh is an award-winning artist, author, and animation director who has illustrated over eighty children's books internationally, including Saffron Ice Cream, which she also wrote. She won the Sendak Fellowship Award in 2017 and the Bologna Book Fair Ragazzi Award in 2009. Rashin was born in Khorramshahr, Iran, in 1979. Since she was a little girl, her great passion was to become an artist. The beauty of Persian rugs and her interest in astrology inspired her to write and illustrate Bahar, the Lucky. She now lives in Washington, DC, where she teaches art at the University of Maryland and enjoys illustrating for The New York Times, Google, and many amazing publishers around the world.