Scott Westerfeld

Westerfeld is the youngest of three children. As a young person, his family moved around the U.S. for his father’s job—his father was a computer programmer and worked on the Apollo missions, for Boeing, and on submarines. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Vassar, Westerfeld worked in a variety of different jobs: a factory worker making lead soldiers, a software designer, a textbook editor, and a ghostwriter. He published his first novel in 1997, but it wasn’t until he published Evolution’s Darling in 2000 that his books began to attract attention and win major awards. In 2004 he began writing for young adults and got his big break a year later with Uglies. Westerfeld is very active online and on social media with his fans of the Uglies series and of the Leviathan series in particular. He and his wife split time between New York and Australia.