Libby Ware lived the first five years of her life in West Virginia, and spent some childhood summers in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia. She is the owner of Toadlily Books, an antiquarian book business, and is also a book collector. The beginning of Lum, excerpted as a short story, "The Circuit," was published in Feminist Studies in 2009, and was a finalist in the Poets & Writers Award for Georgia Writers, judged by Jennifer Egan. Ware lives in Atlanta with her two dogs, Tilly and Robin, and a mile away from her partner, Charlene Ball. Lum won the ALA Stonewall Barbara Gittings Honor Award.