Merce López graduated from Llotja Art School in Barcelona and has illustrated for design, theater, and film as well as twenty children's books for Spanish and international book publishers. Her 2019 title Lion of the Sky: Haiku for All Seasons by Laura Purdie Salas received multiple starred reviews and was named a Center for Children's Books Gryphon Honor Book, an NCTE Notable Poetry Book, a Kirkus Best Picture Book, and a Parents Magazine Best Kids' Book, among other accolades. In a starred review of I Am Smoke (Tilbury House, 2021), Kirkus called her illustrations "Lustrous" and "Exquisitely beautiful." In his 100 Scope Notes column for School Library Journal, Travis Jonker called I Am Smoke "One of the most astonishingly unconventional children's books of 2021. Here's to children's books that expand our assumptions of what a children's book can be.".