Celia C. Pérez is the daughter of a Mexican mother and a Cuban father.  Her debut book for young readers, The First Rule of Punk (Viking / Penguin), was a 2018 Pura Belpré Award Honor Book, a 2018 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards honor book, and a winner of the 2018 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award, a Junior Library Guild selection, and was included in several best of the year lists including the Amelia Bloomer List, NPR's Best Books of 2017, the Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best Books, the New York Public Library's Best Books for Kids, School Library Journal's Best of 2017, The Horn Book Magazine's Fanfare, and ALSC's Notable Children's Books. 

Her second book for young readers, Strange Birds: A Field Guide to Ruffling Feathers (Kokila / Penguin, 2019), is an Association of Library Services to Children Notable Children’s Book and was named to several best-of-the-year lists, including Rise: A Feminist Book Project List (formerly the Amelia Bloomer List), the Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices 2020, the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature Best Books of 2019, the Chicago Public Library’s Best Books of 2019, and the Washington Post‘s Best Children’s Books of 2019. 

Her third book for young readers, Tumble (Kokila, Penguin, 2022) was a 2023 Pura Belpré Award Honor Book and a winner of the 2023 Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award, among other honors.

She is originally from Miami and is a graduate of the University of Florida (Go Gators!) and the University of South Florida. She lives with her family in Chicago where, in addition to writing books about lovable weirdos and outsiders, she works as a community college librarian.