Leigh Bardugo

Leigh Bardugo (born 6 April 1975) is an Israeli-American fantasy writer, creator of the Grishaverse novels that begin with Shadow and Bone (2012) and author of the adult Alex Stern novels starting with Ninth House (2019). She was born in Jerusalem and raised by her grandparents in Los Angeles, where she still lives.

She graduated from Yale University with a degree in English in 1997 and worked in copywriting, journalism and make-up and special effects before her first novel. Shadow and Bone was published in the United States by Macmillan on 5 June 2012, and was followed by Siege and Storm (2013) and Ruin and Rising (2014). The heist duology Six of Crows (Henry Holt, 29 September 2015) and Crooked Kingdom (2016) moved the series to a new city and cast, and King of Scars (2019) and Rule of Wolves (2021) completed a further duology.

Her first adult novel, Ninth House, was published by Flatiron Books in 2019 and won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fantasy; its sequel, Hell Bent, appeared in 2023, and The Familiar followed from Flatiron in 2024. Netflix adapted Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows together as the series Shadow and Bone (2021), with Bardugo as an executive producer. She is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale.

For collectors, the first US edition of Shadow and Bone (Macmillan, 2012), her debut, is the key book, followed by the first printing of Six of Crows (2015), which opened the heist duology adapted alongside it for Netflix.