Stephenie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer, born Stephenie Morgan on December 24, 1973, in Hartford, Connecticut, is an American novelist and film producer best known for the vampire romance series Twilight. Raised in Phoenix, Arizona, she was the second of six children of Stephen Morgan, a financial officer, and Candy Morgan, a homemaker. She attended Chaparral High School in Scottsdale and won a National Merit Scholarship in 1992, which helped pay for her studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Meyer earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature in 1997, after also taking classes at Arizona State University during the 1996 and 1997 academic year.

Before she became an author, Meyer did not see writing as a likely career. She considered law school and had worked as a receptionist at a property company. She married Christian “Pancho” Meyer in 1994, after knowing him in Arizona when they were both children. The couple have three sons, born in 1997, 2001, and 2003. Meyer later said that the birth of her oldest son, Gabe, changed her plans: “Once I had Gabe, I just wanted to be his mom.” Christian later retired from his job as an auditor to care for their children full time.

The idea for Twilight came to Meyer in a dream on June 2, 2003. In it, a human girl and a vampire were in love, while he also thirsted for her blood. Meyer began by writing what became chapter 13, then wrote to the end of the novel before filling in the earlier chapters. She wrote in secret, without prior experience as an author and without a set audience or firm plan to publish. Influenced by Jane Austen and William Shakespeare, and encouraged by her sister’s enthusiastic response, she sent the manuscript to literary agencies. After unanswered letters and rejections, Jodi Reamer of Writers House responded positively, and in 2003 Little, Brown and Company offered Meyer a $750,000 three-book deal.

Twilight was published in 2005 with a print run of 75,000 copies and soon reached The New York Times Best Seller list for Children’s Chapter Books. The series continued with New Moon in 2006, Eclipse in 2007, and Breaking Dawn in 2008. Together, the books became a major commercial success, selling more than 160 million copies and appearing in 37 languages. Meyer was the bestselling author in the United States in both 2008 and 2009, selling more than 29 million books in 2008 and 26.5 million in 2009. The series also led to commercially successful film adaptations, and Meyer later co-founded Fickle Fish Films, producing both parts of Breaking Dawn and two other novel adaptations.

Meyer’s work was shaped by her avid reading, her English literature education, and her membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Themes connected to her religion, including agency, mortality, temptation, and eternal life, appear often in her novels. Critics have called her writing style overly simple, while readers have praised her stories and formed a large fan following. Beyond young adult fiction, Meyer wrote the adult novels The Host in 2008 and The Chemist in 2016. Her books speak to readers through direct feeling, high-stakes longing, and questions about choice, danger, love, and life beyond death.