Wendy Orr was born in Edmonton, Canada, but grew up in various places across Canada, France and the USA. She started writing for children after a career as an occupational therapist.

She's the author of many award-winning books, including Nim's Island, Raven's Mountain, Dragonfly Song and Peeling the Onion. Dragonfly Song was a CBCA Book of the Year Honour Book and won the 2017 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Children's Fiction and the 2018 Children's Literature Award at the Adelaide Festival.

Wendy had a great adventure of her own when a film producer in Hollywood took Nim's Island out of the library to read to her son. The next day she asked Wendy if she could make it into a movie. Wendy said 'Yes!', they became good friends, and Wendy had the fun of helping work on the screenplay for 'Nim's Island' the movie. Nim at Sea inspired the movie 'Return to Nim's Island', which starred Bindi Irwin as Nim.