Mary Averling grew up across England and Canada, never far from the woods. She has degrees from the University of Victoria and Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Her debut, The Curse of Eelgrass Bog, was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist, a Junior Library Gold Standard Selection, an ALA Rainbow List Pick, and one of BookPage's Top 10 Books of 2024. She is currently working towards her PhD in Kamloops, British Columbia, where she lives with a little cat called Cobweb.

She is represented by Kelly Sonnack at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.