About Lev

Lev Grossman is the author of eight novels, including the bestselling The Bright Sword, an epic retelling of the story of King Arthur. The Bright Sword earned praise from George R.R. Martin and Rebecca Yarros, and the New York Times said it “resoundingly earns its place among the best of Arthurian tales.” He’s 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 written essays and articles for 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 is from. He has three children and a somehow steadily increasing number of cats.