ISLA MORLEY grew up in South Africa during apartheid. During the country’s State of Emergency, she graduated from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth with a degree in English literature. By 1994 she was one of the youngest magazine editors in South Africa, but she left career, country, and kin when she married an American and moved to the United States. For more than a decade she pursued a career in nonprofit work, focusing on the needs of women and children. Now in the Los Angeles area, she shares a home with her husband, their daughter, two cats, a dog, and a tortoise.