Leah Grisham is a freelance writer whose work focuses on Judaism, feminism, and literature. She received her PhD in English from George Washington University in 2020, where her work focused on Victorian novels that resist patriarchal social norms. Her first book, an academic monograph titled Heroic Disobedience: The Forced Marriage Plot and the British Novel, 1747–1880, was published in 2023.

The World Has Caught Fire grew out of her longstanding interest in Holocaust memory, especially the stories that get forgotten. This is her first work of narrative nonfiction. She lives in Ohio with her husband and two young children. Her writing can also be found in magazines like Kveller, Lilith, and on her blog leahshewrote.com.