


^ "Portland Writer Laini Taylor is National Book Award finalist"."The Girl Who Woke the Dreamer" in My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(2014)."Gentleman Send Phantoms" in Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction (2012)."Spanking Robots" in Fractured Fables (2010).The Drowned, illustrated by Jim Di Bartolo (2004).Night of Cake and Puppets (novella) (2013).Printz Honor Book as well as the 2018 Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature. Taylor created a unique language for this world, which she weaves into the plot. In 2017, she published Strange the Dreamer, followed by its sequel Muse of Nightmares in 2018, in which protagonist Lazlo Strange, a scribe and polyglot, journeys to the Lost City of Weep.

The first book in the series was chosen by Amazon as the Best Teen Book of 2011, and the sequel, Days of Blood and Starlight, was also on the list in 2012. In 2011, she published Daughter of Smoke and Bone, a young adult fantasy series. The sequel, Dreamdark: Silksinger, was a winner of the 2009 Cybil Award. Her first novel, Dreamdark: Blackbringer, was published in 2007. In 2004, she wrote a graphic novel for Image Comics, illustrated by her husband, Jim Di Bartolo. She always wanted to be a writer, and was 35 before she finished her first novel. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter. Taylor was born in Chico, California, grew up as a US military kid in Europe and California, and earned her English degree from UC Berkeley. Laini Taylor (born December 22, 1971) is an American young adult fantasy author and a finalist for the National Book Award in Young People's Literature, best known for the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, Strange the Dreamer, and Muse of Nightmares.
