Kimberly Willis Holt was born during a hurricane in Pensacola, Florida. While growing up, she lived in Paris, Guam, and several other U.S. states because her father was a navy chief. Today, she lives in Amarillo, Texas, with her husband and daughter, but seven generations of her family have lived in Louisiana. She still calls Forest Hill, Louisiana, home because that is where her parents were from and that was the place to which they always returned during her childhood.

When she was twelve, Holt read Carson McCullers's book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and as she explained in an interview for Kathleen Horning's online article for School Library Journal, "It was life-changing because of the characters. That was the first time I read a book where the characters seemed like real people to me." Other books she read as a child...