Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses domestic abuse and sexual assault.

Colleen Oakley is a best-selling fiction author based in Atlanta, where The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise takes place. She has published five fiction novels that all focus heavily on character-driven narratives and the exploration of various types of relationships: platonic, romantic, and familial. Oakley has also worked as a magazine writer and editor, with pieces appearing in publications such as The New York Times, Parade, and Marie Claire. Oakley’s novels have won a variety of awards and have been translated into over 21 languages.

Oakley’s novels often look at love through varying lenses, and the resulting relationship pairings are unconventional: two strangers who keep dreaming about each other (You Were There Too, 2020), a librarian allergic to human touch and a struggling single father (Close Enough to Touch, 2017), a widow who pretends her husband is still alive and the journalist fascinated by her (The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, 2021). The core love in The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise isn’t romantic, though there is a blossoming romantic relationship between Tanner and August. Oakley shifts her primary focus away from romance and onto the friendship that grows between Tanner and Louise as they journey across the country together.