Heather Augustyn is a renowned expert of early Jamaican music and English composition. She is the author of Ska: An Oral History (2010), Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World’s Greatest Trombonist (2013), Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), Songbirds: Pioneering Women in Jamaican Music (2014), and Dragon: The Story of Byron Lee, Ambassador of Jamaican Music (2016). She is a newspaper reporter for the Times of Northwest Indiana, an elementary-school writing teacher, and she lives with her husband and two boys in northwest Indiana.