Sandra J. Schumm has lived in Missouri or Kansas most of her life, except for sojourns, studies, and sabbaticals in other countries. The only time she ever skipped school was at age twelve when she sneaked back into her house through an unlocked window to hide in a closet and finish reading a novel. Fiction and creative writing have always been a keystone of her life. After three of her four children were born, she entered graduate school at the University of Kansas to attain her MA and PhD in Spanish with a concentration on twentieth-century Spanish and Latin American narrative. She taught university Spanish classes for more than twenty-five years and is now Professor Emerita at Baker University. As a certified yoga instructor, she also teaches yoga classes. Previous publications include two books of literary criticism—Reflection in Sequence: Novels by Spanish Women, 1944-1988 (Bucknell University Press) and Mother and Myth in Spanish Novels: Rewriting the Maternal Archetype (Bucknell University Press). In 2020 she published Girl in a Cage: A Novel and in 2025 The Mermaid Necklace. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas with her husband, Robert, and cat, Arjuna.