E LANA G OMEL has taught and researched English literature at Tel-Aviv University, Princeton, Stanford, Venice International University and the University of Hong Kong where she spent a memorable year. Since then, she has visited Hong Kong, mainland China, Japan, Thailand and Cambodia many times, both as an academic and as a traveler, immersing herself in these countries' cultures, histories and present-day struggles. The Hungry Ones reflects her fascination with Asian cityscapes and dreamscapes. She is the author of four academic books, including Bloodscripts: Writing the Violent Subject (2003), Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination (2010), and Alien Encounters, and the Ethics of Posthumanism: Beyond the Golden Rule London (2014). In 2009 she published The Pilgrim Soul: Being Russian in Israel, which is one of the first comprehensive treatments of the subject. She is the author of more than 40 fantasy, horror and science fiction stories, that appeared in New Horizons, The Fantasist, Timeless Tales, The Singularity, New Realms, Alien Dimensions, and many other magazines; and in several anthologies, including People of the Book, Ink Stains, Zion's Fiction, and Apex Book of World Science Fiction. Her story "In the Moment" won second place in the 2009 Short Story Competition of the British Fantasy Society. Her fantasy novel A Tale of Three Cities was published in 2013, and her standalone novella "Dreaming the Dark" came out in 2017.