About Lev

Lev Grossman is the author of eight novels, including the bestseller The Bright Sword, an epic retelling of the story of King Arthur, which was a Time, Vanity Fair, Kirkus, NPR and New York Times Best Book of 2024. The Washington Post called it “a thrilling new take on Arthurian legend,” and George R.R. Martin said, “if you love King Arthur as much as I do, you’ll love Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword.” In 2025 the New York Times called Grossman “a master storyteller.”

Grossman is also the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Magicians trilogy—The Magicians, The Magician King, and The Magician’s Land—which has been published in thirty countries and was adapted as a TV show that ran for five seasons on Syfy. Lev has written two novels for children: The Silver Arrow, a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, People, Apple and Amazon Best Book of the Year, and its sequel The Golden Swift. He also wrote the screenplay for the movie The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, which was a finalist for the Critic’s Choice awards.

From 2002 to 2016 Lev worked as a staff writer at Time magazine, where he wrote more than 20 cover stories, and he’s also written essays and reviews for the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Salon, Slate, Wired, Entertainment Weekly, the Believer, the Village Voice, the Week, Buzzfeed, NPR, Lingua Franca, and many other places. He has degrees from Harvard and Yale and regularly gives talks and workshops at festivals and colleges, and he has served on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle, Electric Literature, and the Harvard Advocate. In 2018 he was the Mary Higgins Clark Chair in Creative Writing at Fordham College.

Lev grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, the son of two English professors. His twin brother Austin is a writer and game designer, and his older sister Sheba is an artist. He lives in Brooklyn, New York but spends a lot of time in Sydney, Australia, where his wife Sophie is from. He has three children and a somehow steadily increasing number of cats.