Samira Ahmed is an American author and essayist born in Mumbai, India. Her debut novel, Love and Other Filters was a New York Times Bestseller and established Ahmed as a young adult writer focused on the effects of Islamophobia in the United States. Her second novel, Internment, is set in a near-future America where Muslim Americans are sent to internment camps at the command of an Islamophobic president. Ahmed is a graduate of The University of Chicago, and her novels often reference the city. Before her writing career, Ahmed worked in New York schools as a teacher, non-profit fundraiser, and political campaign staffer. 

In her Author’s Note, Ahmed explains how Hollow Fires is based on her own experience with political unrest, racism, and Islamophobia in the United States, and on the experiences of others in her community. Ahmed leverages her background in politics to portray the role of media in American public opinion, and her background in education to show how hate crimes affect modern American teenagers in private and public schools.

Following the attack on four United States locations on September 11, 2001, the US Congress passed the Patriot Act, which gave the government sweeping abilities to surveil and detain any person thought to be acting against the United States.