Laura McNeal received a master's degree in fiction writing from Syracuse University. She taught middle school and high school English before becoming a novelist and journalist. She has written several books with her husband Tom McNeal including Crooked, winner of the California Book Award for Juvenile Literature; Zipped, winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Children's Literature; Crushed; and The Decoding of Lana Morris. Dark Water is her first solo title and was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Writer Tom McNeal attended the University of California and Stanford University. McNeal's short fiction has appeared in Playboy and his novel Goodnight, Nebraska (1998) is inspired, in part, by his mothers stories of her childhood in a remote Nebraska town.