MV Perry is from Winnetka, Illinois. Perry holds a Master's in Public Policy and Administration with a concentration in Urban Mental Health Policy, completing it with capstone paper analyzed the mental health system in Illinois, told exclusively through interviews of people with firsthand experience of mental illness. Perry has worked as a psychiatric hospital volunteer and as a project manager on a federal grant to organize mental health consumers across the State of Illinois. Perry’s experience in these realms has informed much of this manuscript’s content. While on this grant, Perry's organization was a prospective plaintiff on the Chicago Police Department consent decree, which later mandated mental health reforms within the Chicago Police Department. Perry began writing this book while in graduate school in 2015, after half of a decade spent in and out of states of disability and mental illness. Perry’s dynamic career includes former work in the retail, labor, and service industries. Perry has also worked in secondary education, tried a hand at being a bar trivia host, served as a Parisian Au Pair, and as an AmeriCorps Vista in a Chicago legal aid clinic. Currently, Perry is a Law Student at Case Western Reserve University. Perry has also been active in criminal justice, disability justice, and racial justice organizing for several years. In 2019, Perry was featured in an oral history on disability in the United States, "From the Periphery: Real-Life Stories of Disability." A fan of all arts, Perry enjoys film and music and plays piano and guitar.