Vanessa Woods is a researcher, journalist, and children's book author. She collaborates with Duke University and Lola Ya Bonobo in Congo as a member of the Hominoid Psychology Research Group. She's also a Discovery Channel feature writer, and her work has appeared in publications including BBC Wildlife and Travel Africa. It's Every Monkey for Themselves, her first book, was released in Australia in 2007. Woods and her husband, physicist Brian Hare, live in North Carolina.