Lisa Colleen Graff (also known under the pen name of Isla Neal, born January 10, 1981[1]) is an American teen and children's book writer.
She started writing her first story (The Strangest Flower) at the age of 8, one day when she was bored.
While Graff has always written stories, she only started considering writing as a career at her junior year in college, during an exchange program in Italy, when her language professor helped her translate one of her stories to Italian.
She has worked for five years as an associate editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux Books for Young Readers before turning to writing full-time.
[8] She is also an adjunct professor teaching a course about children's literature at McDaniel College in Maryland.