Graham Balch is the author of the AMERICA Series — which includes fast-paced crime thrillers, historical fiction, time travel and speculative fiction that explore the idea of what America is and what makes it great — empathy across cultures, the natural ecological beauty, and a sense of determination to explore and create. He lives in Northern California with his wife, two daughters, and two dogs, and has spent much of his life doing the kinds of things that end up in fiction: walking wilderness trails alone for months, learning Mayan languages, crossing oceans under sail, and sitting with people whose worlds are nothing like his own.

That curiosity has taken him far. After graduating from Middlebury College with a degree in Environmental Studies, Graham spent two years as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala, living with indigenous Q'eqchi' Mayan communities, learning their language, and helping to increase community participation — particularly from women — in community planning and local projects. He has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine — all 2,162 miles — and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean aboard an electric vessel and around the islands of the Caribbean.

His professional life has been equally wide-ranging. Graham holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and worked as a strategy consultant at both Bain & Company and Boston Consulting Group — including leading strategy for the post-Katrina reopening of New Orleans schools. He later founded and leads ZeroMar, a marine electrification company, where his deep knowledge of vessels, maritime systems, and the tension between technology and regulation finds its way into both his fiction and his historical research. He is fluent in Spanish and speaks French and Q'eqchi'.

When he's not writing, Graham is running through the redwood forests of Northern California with the dogs, or deep in research for Book Four of the AMERICA Series — a story that will take readers to South America in the 1490s, diving deep into the worlds of the Aztec and Incan civilizations.