Priest is a Florida native, born in Tampa in 1975. She graduated from Forest Lake Academy in Apopka, Florida in 1993. She moved around quite a bit as a child of an Army father, living in many places such as Florida, Texas, Kentucky, and Tennessee. She moved around regularly until college. In 2001 she left the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with an M.A. in Rhetoric/Professional writing, and in 1998 she graduated with a B.A. from Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, TN. Priest lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee for twelve years and it is there she both set her Eden Moore series and wrote the first two books. She currently resides in Seattle, Washington with her husband and her cat, Spain.