Alexey Katherine Moore is a painter, cartoonist and shadow puppeteer. She was born in Germany and attended German schools. Her family moved to the United States after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Living in Europe influenced her artistic understanding of history, and, having spent her childhood amongst medieval architecture, she developed a fascination with the role that architecture plays in the development of the individual self.

Living in the United States, Alexey briefly studied art at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, in Old Lyme, Connecticut.  In 2008 she moved to Portland, Oregon, where she earned a BFA degree in Illustration from The Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Alexey's shadow puppet troupe In Shadows, was born in Portland, Oregon. In the beginning In Shadows performed alongside Portland bands but the group grew into something all on its own. Currently Alexey writes and directs for the puppet troupe and has had great success with a show called Krampus in Dreamland. In Shadows likes to build puppets out of reusable materials as much as possible as they are a green company that respects the earth and dislikes using plastic.

Ever since her first barista job in the late 1990's, Alexey has ruminated about creating a Disgruntled Barista cartoon series. The scenes in this book are inspired by real observations of real people in the coffee-counterculture; sometimes on duty in coffee shops, sometimes as they formed their own coffee klatches. The characters in her series are not based on individuals, rather a combination of many. No baristas were harmed in the creation of these stories.