Nicola Yoon

Nicola Yoon was born in Jamaica and grew up in both Jamaica and Brooklyn, New York. She received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University, though an elective creative writing class sparked an interest in writing. She attended a master’s program at Emerson College for creative writing, though she spent 20 years as a programmer for investment firms. She published her first novel, Everything, Everything, in 2015 after the birth of her daughter, who is biracial. Her husband, David Yoon, drew the illustrations for the novel. It spent 40 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and her second novel, The Sun Is Also a Star, received even more awards than its predecessor. Yoon and her family have been very involved with the organization We Need Diverse Books, a group that works to increase and promote diversity and representation in literature. The Yoon family lives in Los Angeles, California.