As a witness to AIDS and a Manhattanite on 9/11, Steven Damron draws on personal experiences to render Dear Mustafa. Damron studied English literature at Dartmouth College and Creative Writing at The Writing Salon in San Francisco. His tech start-up career includes a stint at Artify, an art subscription business, where he honed his knowledge of art.

Damron moved to Barcelona in 2020 where he completed Dear Mustafa during Spain’s Covid-19 lockdown. He blogged about his lockdown experience in Covid Diary BCN, creating a record of life during the pandemic.