ZIZOU CORDER is the pen name for a mother-daughter team of authors. Louisa Young grew up in London and studied history at Cambridge. She has written another trilogy for adults featuring a belly-dancing, motorcycle-riding single mom (Baby Love, Desiring Cairo, and Tree of Pearls), as well as a non-fiction book, The Book of the Heart.

Her ten-year-old daughter, Isabel Adomakoh Young contributed plot and character details, some of which mirror her own life—like Charlie, the hero of Lionboy Isabel is the child of an English woman and an African man and, also like Charlie, she suffers asthma.

The pen name Zizou Corder comes from Isabel's pet lizard, Zizu. They all live together in London.