Alie Benge was born in Auckland in 1989. She spent her early childhood in Ethiopia with her Christian missionary family, and from 1999 to 2012 lived in Australia, where she served in the army. Alie won the Landfall Essay Competition in 2017, and in 2018 gained an MA in Creative Writing from the Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington. Her work has been published in The Spinoff, Takahe Turbine Kapohau and elsewhere. Ithaca is her first book.