Maggie Shipstead is an acclaimed American novelist, short story author, essayist, and travel writer. Her literary career is marked by notable achievements, including her debut novel, Seating Arrangements (2012), which won the Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. She followed this success with Astonish Me (2014), and in 2021, her novel Great Circle was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize and the Women's Prize. Shipstead's collection of short stories, You Have a Friend in 10A, was published in 2022.

Shipstead's educational background includes a graduation from Harvard and the esteemed Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her writing talent was further nurtured as a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, and she was honored with a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her works have been featured in various prestigious publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and many others. She has twice been a finalist for a National Magazine Award.

She resides in Los Angeles, continuing to contribute significantly to the literary world with her distinctive voice and storytelling prowess.