[close] Kyra Davis was born in Santa Clara, California. Her mother was single at the time of her birth and raised her with the help of Kyra's maternal grandparents in Santa Cruz, California. Her mother's side of the family is Jewish of Eastern European descent. Her father was African American and lived in Los Angeles.

Kyra's mother (who apparently had a thing for the multicultural) married an Irish Catholic man with a son who was three years Kyra's senior, the summer before Kyra entered middle school.

Kyra spent much of her school years pursuing her passion for the theater. She was in every school play and community production that would have her and she often spent her summers at various theater conservatories honing her craft.

Just months before her eighteenth birthday Kyra moved to San Francisco and the city quickly became her home. After taking some time off between high school and college to travel around Europe Kyra decided not to pursue acting as a career and enrolled in The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) where she studied Fashion Merchandising and Marketing. She then went to New York where she attended The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). However by then she had already met her future ex-husband and left FIT before graduating in order to be with him in San Francisco. She was engaged to be married one day after her return to California.

Kyra didn't waste any time re-enrolling in school-this time at Golden Gate University where she studied business and humanities and eventually graduated with a Bachelor's Degree. While attending school she worked as a department head for Nordstrom. In 1998 Kyra became pregnant with her son and moved out of San Francisco and into the greater Bay Area. After taking some time off of work she accepted a job as Marketing Manager at an upscale Sports Club.

It wasn't long after Kyra discovered that she was pregnant that her marriage began to unravel and in 2001 she filed for divorce. It was a very difficult time for her both emotionally and financially and the stress of her situation caused her to suffer from insomnia. She often found herself lying awake at night making up stories in her head (which was the only way she could keep herself from stressing out about her own life). Eventually she decided that since she couldn't sleep anyway she might as well write one of the stories down. And thus her protagonist, Sophie Katz, was born. Kyra was about fifty pages into the book when she realized that writing wasn't just a means of escape for her-it was a passion, one that she wanted to make into a career. It wasn't easy to fit writing into her life now that she was a single working mom and it took her almost two years to complete her first manuscript. With the financial assistance of her mother and stepfather, Kyra went to the Willamette Writers Conference in Oregon and it was there that she met her future agent. Just months after Kyra signed with the Kraas Literary Agency two New York Publishing houses bid on her novel Sex, Murder, And A Double Latte and Kyra ended up signing with Red Dress Ink for a three book deal. Shortly thereafter Red Dress Ink made another offer on her then unfinished Chick Lit novel Utopia?

Kyra now writes full time and lives in Southern California. Thanks to better childcare she no longer needs to stay up all night in order to finish a manuscript---but she often does anyway just for nostalgia's sake. [close]