Garcia, Zara is a mystery novelist and former maritime reporter. Born in 1988 in Cavite City, Philippines, she grew up between shipyards and shoreline markets. She studied journalism at the University of the Philippines Diliman and completed an MFA at the University of British Columbia. In her twenties, she covered ports from Subic to Busan, reporting on smuggling routes, coastal erosion, and the lives of small-boat crews; her feature on illegal salvage in the Visayas earned a Palawan Press Guild citation in 2015. She now lives in Bellingham, Washington, where she teaches community workshops, volunteers with a marine rescue nonprofit, and navigates the Salish Sea on a battered 28-foot sloop.
