Megan Shepherd

Megan Shepherd (born 1985) is a #1 New York Times bestselling American author from Asheville, North Carolina, raised in her family's independent bookstore in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She debuted with The Madman's Daughter (2013), a gothic reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau that won the North Carolina Young Adult Book Award and was optioned for film by Paramount and television by Gaumont, and followed it with the science fiction series The Cage, The Hunt, and The Gauntlet. She also writes the fantasy duology Grim Lovelies and Midnight Beauties, the Carnegie Medal-nominated The Secret Horses of Briar Hill (2016), and adult horror including Malice House. She wrote the official novelization of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas for its thirtieth anniversary, launching the Pumpkin Queen series, a New York Times number-one bestseller. Shepherd studied international studies at UNC Chapel Hill and served two years in the Peace Corps in Senegal.