Leigh Bardugo (born April 6, 1975) is a bestselling American fantasy author best known for creating the Grishaverse and for her adult Alex Stern series, beginning with Ninth House. Born in Jerusalem and raised in Los Angeles, she graduated from Yale University with a degree in English in 1997 and was a member of Yale’s Wolf’s Head secret society—an experience that later helped inspire the secret-society world of Ninth House. Before becoming a novelist, Bardugo worked in copywriting, journalism, makeup, and special effects; she published her debut, Shadow and Bone, in 2012 and went on to write the Six of Crows and King of Scars duologies, The Familiar, and the Alex Stern (Ninth House) trilogy. She lives in Los Angeles and is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale.