For Tray Butler, writing Moon Atlanta felt like the happy culmination of a lifetime exploring the city he considers home. A passionate traveler who has visited 10 countries in the past decade, he’s been thrilled to rediscover the cultural vibrance that exists in Atlanta. As cliché as it sounds, Tray believes Atlanta truly is the Phoenix City it claims to be, always reinventing itself.

Tray grew up almost an hour north of Atlanta in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. His parents ran a pet shop and drove into the city often, bringing back vanloads of parakeets and tropical fish. Those trips gave Tray the impression that Atlanta was a wild and unpredictable place—a pretty accurate description, as things would turn out. After graduating from the University of Georgia, Tray moved to Midtown and landed a job as an arts and entertainment reporter for Creative Loafing, Atlanta’s alternative weekly newspaper. He later relocated to Manhattan where he worked as the editor of The New York Blade and HX magazine.

In 2007, Tray returned to Atlanta and moved into an historic 1917 Ansley Park building, once home to author Margaret Mitchell. As a freelance writer and illustrator, his stories and artwork have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Advocate, Genre, Go, The New York Press, Seed, and Time Out New York. Tray and his partner Brian now split their time between London and Atlanta. A confessed sweet tea addict and a fiend for fried chicken, this southern boy admits he never can stay away from Georgia for long.