Michele Roldán-Shaw is an author and artist based on the coast of South Carolina. She began self-publishing her stories, drawings and photographs while still in high school, then became a freelance journalist at the age of 21. She has written hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, as well as two books about her travels around the South. In 2011 she learned Vipassana Meditation and  began serious study of the Buddha's teaching, which now forms the underpinning of her life and work. Her current project is a series of children's books based on ancient Indian folktales about the Buddha's past lives.