Elsa Marston

Elsa Marston is an award-winning author of over 20 teen and children’s books, specializing in the Middle East and North Africa, ancient and modern. She has a master’s degree in international affairs from Harvard University with further study at the American University of Beirut, and has lived in Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia with her husband, the late Professor Iliya Harik of Indiana University. In addition to her books with Wisdom Tales (The Compassionate Warrior and, forthcoming, The Olive Tree), her recent work includes Santa Claus in Baghdad and Other Stories About Teens in the Arab World, Women in the Middle East: Tradition and Change, The Byzantine Empire, and Muhammad of Mecca, a historical biography. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana.