Everything, Everything (Yoon) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—1972
• Where—Jamaica
• Raised—Jamaica; Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Emerson College
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Nicola Yoon is the New York Times bestselling author of the young adult books Everything, Everything (2015) and The Sun Is Also a Star (2016). She grew up in Jamaica (the island) and Brooklyn (on Long Island).

Yoon's path to writing was a roundabout one. As a child, she loved to write, starting when she was 8 or 9, yet by high school, she'd become a math nerd, and in college she majored in electrical engineering. It wasn't until her senior college year, when she took a creative writing class, that she rediscovered her love of writing.

Nonetheless, Yoon went on to become a financial data programmer for investment firms. She worked in that field for several years and then decided to enroll in a creative writing program at Emerson College, where she earned an M.F.A. Still, she worked for another 20-some years—while writing on the side—before getting her first book deal.

That first book was Everything, Everything—a bestseller, a "best book of the year" on many lists, and a 2017 motion picture. Yoon says her inspiration came with the birth of her daughter after which she worried obsessively about her child's safety. Anything, she said, would make her frantic. Then she began to imagine a child whose life truly was threatened by the world, for ever, simply by being in it. How would an overly protective mother respond to those threats, and what shape would the mother-daughter relationship take?

That germ of an idea grew into Everything Everything, which was released in 2015. Yoon's husband, by the way, provided the artwork for the book. Her debut was followed by The Sun Is Also a Star in 2016, which has also been widely praised.

Yoon lives in Los Angeles, California, with her family. She’s also a hopeless romantic who firmly believes that you can fall in love in an instant and that it can last forever. (Adapted from the publisher and various online sources.)