Brad Meltzer

Brad Meltzer, born April 1, 1970, in Brooklyn, New York, is an American novelist, non-fiction writer, TV show creator, and comic book author whose work belongs to the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He has written political thrillers, legal thrillers, conspiracy fiction, superhero comics, and short biographies for young readers. Across those forms, he has often returned to questions of history, hidden motives, public service, and the lives of people who changed the world.

Meltzer grew up in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, the son of Jewish parents, Stewart and Teri Meltzer. He has said that his childhood home had very few books, but comic books entered through his father, who brought them home from work in the garment industry. In 1983, after his father lost his job, the family moved to Miami with limited money and first lived in his grandmother’s one-bedroom apartment. In Florida, his English teacher Sheila Spicer recognized his writing talent and encouraged him toward honors-level work, a mark of support he has credited as important to his path.

He became the first person in his immediate family to attend a four-year college, graduating from the University of Michigan in 1992 with a degree in history. He later attended Columbia Law School, served on the Columbia Law Review, and earned his Juris Doctor in 1996. While living in Beacon Hill, Boston, in 1993 with fellow comic book writer and artist Judd Winick, he worked in sales at Games magazine by day and wrote his first novel by night. That first novel, Fraternity, drew 24 rejection letters, but his second, The Tenth Justice, sold while he was still in law school.

Meltzer’s books have appeared on bestseller lists in several categories, including fiction, non-fiction, advice, children’s books, and comics. His thrillers have all made The New York Times bestseller list, and The Escape Artist debuted at No. 1 on the Hardcover Fiction list in 2018. His “Culper Ring” novels imagine that a spy ring founded by George Washington still exists today, while The Fifth Assassin follows a killer re-creating the crimes of presidential assassins. In non-fiction, he wrote Heroes For My Son, later followed by Heroes for My Daughter, and with artist Chris Eliopoulos created the children’s biography series Ordinary People Change the World, beginning with I Am Amelia Earhart and I Am Abraham Lincoln. PBS later adapted the series as Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum.

His research-driven interests have also led him beyond the page. Through Brad Meltzer’s Lost History, he helped bring national attention to the missing 9/11 flag raised by firefighters at Ground Zero; after the broadcast, a former Marine returned it, and Meltzer unveiled it at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. He has counted Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush among his readers, and both helped him with research. In 2006, he joined a work group with the CIA, FBI, psychologists, and Department of Homeland Security intelligence staff to imagine possible terrorist attacks on the United States.

Meltzer’s appeal comes from the way he treats ordinary people as possible carriers of courage, curiosity, and service. That belief is clear in his children’s biographies, his books about heroes, and even in his own line: “We are all ordinary. We are all boring. We are all spectacular. We are all shy. We are all bold. We are all heroes. We are all helpless. It just depends on the day.” His words continue to speak to readers because they make history feel close, and heroism feel human.