Viviana Prado-Núñez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in a hospital with a 4.0 Google review rating and a view of the ocean. She has never seen Star Wars, eaten a grasshopper, or written a poem without the letter ‘e’, though she hopes to do all three of those things in the future. She is currently an undergraduate student at Columbia University in the City of New York where she spends a lot of time reading plays and eating strawberry ice cream. The Art of White Roses is her first novel and the winner of the 2017 CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature, which will be launched at this year’s festival.