Tegan Blackwood lives in Columbia, Missouri, where she is a student of English and linguistics, with a focus on medieval languages and literature. She possesses a working knowledge of Old and Middle English, and has studied Latin and Old Icelandic. In 2014, she was awarded the University of Missouri's Peggy Ewing Prize for writing about English literature before 1900 and selected for an Undergraduate Research Mentorship. Her first poem, "The Cat and the Gnat," was published when she was five years old, and she has been writing ever since. Her work draws on her experience as a proudly Autistic single mother and survivor of violence, as well as her lifelong enthusiasm for astronomy and space exploration.