Laini Taylor


Laini Taylor is an American young adult fantasy author and a finalist for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature, best known for the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series.

Biography

Taylor was born in Chico, California, grew up as a US military kid in Europe and California, and earned her English degree from UC Berkeley. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter. She always wanted to be a writer, but was 35 before she finished her first novel.

Career

In 2004, she wrote a graphic novel for Image Comics, illustrated by her husband, Jim Di Bartolo. Her first novel, Dreamdark: Blackbringer, was published in 2007. The sequel, Dreamdark: Silksinger, was a winner of the 2009 Cybil Award. In 2011, she published Daughter of Smoke and Bone, a young adult fantasy series. The first book in the series was chosen by Amazon as the Best Teen Book of 2011, and the sequel, Days of Blood and Starlight, was also on the list in 2012. In 2017, she published Strange the Dreamer, followed by its sequel Muse of Nightmares in 2018, in which protagonist Lazlo Strange, a scribe and polyglot, journeys to the Lost City of Weep. Taylor created a unique language for this world, which she weaves into the plot. Strange the Dreamer became a Michael L. Printz Honor Book as well as the 2018 Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature.

Works

Faeries of Dreamdark