Isla Morley grew up in South Africa during apartheid, the child of a British father and fourth-generation South African mother. During the country's State of Emergency, she graduated from Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth with a degree in English Literature. By 1994 she was one of the youngest magazine editors in South Africa, but left career, country and kin when she married an American and moved to California. For more than a decade she pursued a career in non-profit work, focusing on the needs of women and children. Her debut novel Come Sunday won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the Commonwealth Prize. Her novel Above was an IndieNext pick, a Best Buzz Book, and a Publishers Weekly Best New Book. The Last Blue is her third novel.
She has lived in some of the most culturally diverse places of the world, including Cape Town, London, Honolulu and now Los Angeles where she shares a home with her husband, daughter, three cats and five tortoises.