ELSA HART was born in Rome, Italy, but her earliest memories are of Moscow, where her family lived until 1991. Since then she has lived in the Czech Republic, the USA, and China. She earned a BA from Swarthmore College and a JD from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. She wrote Jade Dragon Mountain, the first of the Li Du novels, in Lijiang, the city that has grown up around the old town of Dayan.
