Elena Alonso Frayle was born in Bilbao in 1965. She studied law at the University of Deusto, and Japanology at the Freie Universität in Berlin. She has lived in France, Senegal, Argentina, Germany and Thailand, and is currently in Berlin, where she dedicates her life exclusively to writing. She has won numerous literary awards for her stories and novels, and has published in Spain and in Mexico. Her first story collection, Reached This Point (2012), won the Letras del Bicentenario Award in Mexico for Juana Inés de la Cruz; her next collection, The Conductive Thread (2014) won the Manuel Llano Award and was a finalist for the Sixth Setenil Award. She has also published Last-Minute Changes (Tenerife, 2015), a finalist for the 13th Setenil Award, and The Malice Within (Tenerife, 2019). She also wrote the novels The Legacy of the Iwakura Mission (2010), which won the Gabriel Sijé Award, and The Silence of Centuries (2013).