Laura Tensen was born in the Netherlands, where she lived for 26 year before moving to South Africa. She studied Wildlife Management and Ecology, and finished her PhD in Zoology. Her work mainly focussed on wildlife conservation and genetic diversity of large predators. At age 27 she started writing blogs, based on her travelling stories and the people she met all over the world. After moving back to the Netherlands, she decided to bundle her stories together into Ugly People and Boredom.