Nuraliah grew up as the eldest of three children. Her parents brought her and her brothers up with a love of literature, ensuring that they spent an hour reading books every night. She also learned the skills of imaginative world-building from her passion for online games such as
The Elder Scrolls. However, her childhood was also troubled, due to her family's poverty, and the fact that she was both a perpetrator and victim of bullying in school. She eventually channelled her anger into writing, pursuing a PhD in English literature and creative writing at
Nanyang Technological University, exploring how speculative fiction can be used to explore "issues such as marginality, isolation and socio-historical traumas facing the Malay community in Singapore". This work resulted in the manuscript of her first novel,
The Gatekeeper. Her other hobbies include taking walks and collecting stamps. == Literary career ==