Inara Cedrins is an American writer and artist of Latvian descent. She received her B.A. in Writing at Columbia College in Chicago and her M.A. in Arts Administration at the School of the Art Institute, and moved to New York in 1996 to paint at the Art Students League and participate in peer poetry workshops. In 1998 she went to China to learn to paint on silk, and remained three years in Beijing, teaching English, writing and literature at Tsinghua University and Peking University, as well as two years in Guangzhou. She then moved to Kathmandu, where she utilized the thangka painting style to depict Hindu and Buddhist figures in her art, and designed furniture incorporating traditional Nepali motifs. After the king’s coup and abolishment of democracy in 2005, she relocated to Riga, Latvia. From her cross-cultural experiences she writes poetry, short stories and novels.