Stephenie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer (née Morgan; born December 24, 1973) is an American novelist and film producer.

She is best known for writing the vampire romance series Twilight, which has sold over 160 million copies, with translations into 37 different languages.

Stephenie Morgan was born on December 24, 1973, in Hartford, Connecticut, the second of six children to financial officer Stephen Morgan and homemaker Candy Morgan.

Meyer was raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and attended Chaparral High School in Scottsdale, Arizona.

In 1992, Meyer won a National Merit Scholarship, which helped fund her undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where she received a BA in English Literature in 1997.

They married in 1994, when Meyer was twenty-one.

Together, they have sons whom Christian Meyer retired from his job as an auditor to take care of full time.

Before writing her first novel, Twilight, Meyer considered going to law school because she felt she had no chance of becoming a writer.

Although she began and finished her degree at BYU, she took classes at Arizona State University in fall 1996 and spring 1997.

Meyer met her future husband, Christian "Pancho" Meyer, in Arizona when they were both children.

An avid young reader, she attended Brigham Young University, marrying at the age of twenty-one before graduating with a degree in English in 1997.

Having no prior experience as an author, she conceived the idea for the Twilight series in a dream.

Influenced by the work of Jane Austen and William Shakespeare, she wrote Twilight soon thereafter.

After many rejections, Little, Brown and Company offered her a $750,000 three-book deal which led to a four-book series, several spin-off novels and novellas, and a series of commercially successful film adaptations.

She later noted that the birth of her oldest son, Gabe, in 1997 changed her mind: "Once I had Gabe, I just wanted to be his mom."

Before becoming an author, Meyer's only professional work was as a receptionist at a property company.

According to Meyer, the idea for Twilight came to her in a dream on June 2, 2003, about a human girl and a vampire who was in love with her but thirsted for her blood.

Based on this dream, Meyer wrote the draft of what became chapter 13 of the book.

She wrote from chapter 13 to the end of the novel and then backfilled the first 12 chapters, in secret, without an ideal audience in mind or the intention to publish the novel.

Meyer researched the Quileute Native Americans to include their legends and traditions in the novel, though some Quileute tribe members found her use of their legends offensive.

Meyer joined the American Night Writers Association (ANWA) for aspiring LDS female writers.

She completed the novel in three months.

Her sister's response to the book was enthusiastic, and she persuaded Meyer to send the manuscript to literary agencies.

Of the 15 letters she wrote, five went unanswered, nine brought rejections, and the last was a positive response from Jodi Reamer of Writers House.

Eight publishers competed for the rights to publish Twilight in a 2003 auction.

By November, Meyer had signed a $750,000 three-book deal with Little, Brown and Company.

Twilight was published in 2005 with a print run of 75,000 copies.

Bimonthly books signings and events at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, early in her writing career helped cultivate her fanbase.

Twilight reached No. 5 on The New York Times Best Seller list for Children's Chapter Books within a month of its release, and later rose to #1.

The novel was named the Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Editor's Choice.

Meyer was the bestselling author of 2008 and 2009 in the U.S., having sold over 29 million books in 2008 and 26.5 million in 2009.

Aside from young adult novels, Meyer has ventured into adult novels with The Host (2008) and The Chemist (2016).

Meyer has worked in film production and co-founded production company Fickle Fish Films.

Meyer produced both parts of Breaking Dawn and two other novel adaptations.

Meyer's membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shaped her novels.

Themes consistent with her religion, including agency, mortality, temptation, and eternal life, are prominent in her work.

Critics have called her writing style overly simplistic, but her stories have also received praise, and she has acquired a fan following.

Meyer was included on Time magazine's list of the "100 Most Influential People in 2008" and was included in the Forbes Celebrity 100 list of the world's most powerful celebrities in 2009, with her annual earnings exceeding $50 million.

Meyer received the 2009 Children's Book of the Year award from the British Book Awards for Breaking Dawn, the Twilight series finale.

Despite its success, Twilight was one of the most challenged books of 2009 according to the American Library Association for being sexually explicit, age-inappropriate, and for religious views; some schools and libraries were asked to remove the books from their shelves.