Moira was born in Gloucester, Ontario to Irish parents, the second of three girls. While stuck in a boring class at the age of fourteen, she began writing her first book, about a young girl at a school of wizardry who was sitting through a boring class. It was Moira’s first instance of writing what she knew.

Moira attended Canterbury High School, a kind of school of the arts in Ottawa, where she studied the clarinet and the oboe and was forced to sing on a regular basis. At university, she majored in mass communications, the study of how information is created and spread through a society. After graduation, she spent two and a half years in Japan, teaching English and writing the first book she would have published. Upon returning to Canada, she attended law school in Kingston, Ontario, her favourite city.

All of these experiences have had a direct impact on her writing. A second influence is her annoyance with certain trends in politics and society at large. She doesn’t believe she will ever stop being annoyed, nor that there will ever be a shortage of material for her books.