Tahereh Mafi

Tahereh Mafi is an Iranian-American author of young adult fiction, born in November 1988 in a small town in Connecticut. The youngest child in her family, she grew up with four older brothers and parents who had immigrated from Iran. Her childhood included several moves: at age 12, her family moved to Northern California, and at age 14, they moved to Orange County. Those changes, along with her family background, formed part of the world she carried into her writing.

Mafi graduated from University High School in Irvine, California, and later from Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo. She has varying levels of competency in eight languages, a fact that reflects the wide range of language and culture around her education. While in college, she studied abroad for a semester in Barcelona, Spain, where she was fully immersed in Spanish. That close contact with language fits naturally beside a career built on fiction for young readers, where voice, rhythm, and point of view often carry much of the emotional weight.

Before publishing her first novel, Mafi wrote five manuscripts as a way to better understand how to write a book. Her debut, Shatter Me, was published on November 15, 2011. It became the start of the Shatter Me series, followed by Unravel Me on February 5, 2013, and Ignite Me on February 4, 2014. She also wrote five novellas connected to the series: Destroy Me, Fracture Me, Shadow Me, Reveal Me, and Believe Me. The film rights to Shatter Me were purchased by 20th Century Fox.

Her work later expanded beyond the original trilogy. In August 2016, Mafi released Furthermore, a middle-grade novel about a pale girl living in a world filled with color and magic, though she has none of that magic herself. In April 2017, Mafi announced another trilogy set in the Shatter Me universe and following the same cast of characters. The first book in that continuation, Restore Me, was published on March 6, 2018, and is told through the dual points of view of Juliette Ferrars and Warner, the protagonist and antagonist, respectively, of the original trilogy.

Mafi’s next book, A Very Large Expanse of Sea, was released on October 16, 2018, and was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. She currently resides in Irvine, California, where she continues to write. In 2013, she married author Ransom Riggs, and in 2017 she gave birth to their daughter, Layla. Mafi identifies as Muslim. Her books continue to find readers through their attention to identity, voice, and young people facing extraordinary pressure, all written from a life shaped by movement, languages, family, and persistence at the page.