AJ Lancaster grew up on a farm in the Manawatū-Whanganui region of Aotearoa New Zealand. She wrote in the same way she breathed—constantly and without thinking much of it—so it took many years and accumulating a pile of manuscripts for her to realise that she might want to be a writer and, in fact, already was. On the way to this realisation she collected a degree in science, worked in environmental planning, lived on the other side of the world for a bit, and became an editor. Now she lives in the windy coastal city of Wellington, investigating just how many house plants you can fit in one small flat. Her results so far suggest that the limit does not exist.