Leigh Bardugo is a renowned American fantasy author, best known for her young adult Grishaverse novels, which include the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows and King of Scars duologies. She gained further acclaim with her paranormal fantasy adult debut, Ninth House. Her works have been highly successful, with the Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows series being adapted into the Netflix series Shadow and Bone. Additionally, Ninth House is being adapted by Amazon Studios, with Bardugo serving as an executive producer on both projects.

Born in Jerusalem on April 6, 1975, Bardugo grew up in Southern California and graduated from Yale University. She currently resides in Los Angeles and occasionally performs with her band, Captain Automatic. Her short fiction has been featured in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Bardugo is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University.