Amor Towles, born and raised in the Boston area, graduated from Yale College and received an MA in English from Stanford University. His thesis at Stanford, a short story cycle titled “The Temptations of Pleasure”, was published in 1989 in Paris Review 112.

Towles's first novel, Rules of Civility, was published in 2011 and became a New York Times bestseller. It was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best books of 2011 and has been translated into over 15 languages. Its French translation received the 2012 Prix Fitzgerald. In the fall of 2012, the novel was optioned by Lionsgate to be made into a feature film.

His second novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, published in 2016, remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over forty weeks in hardcover and was named one of the best books of 2016 by the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR. The book is being translated into over twenty languages, including Russian. In the summer of 2017, the novel was optioned by EOne and the British director, Tom Harper, to be made into a 6-8 hour miniseries.

After working as an investment professional in Manhattan for over twenty years, Towles now devotes himself full-time to writing. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.