Meg Cabot is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of books for both adults and tweens/teens. Born in the year of the Fire Horse (a notoriously unlucky astrological sign) and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, Meg also lived in Grenoble, France and Carmel, California (the setting for her bestselling Mediator series) before moving to New York City after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Indiana University.
After working for ten years as an assistant residence hall director at New York University (an experience from which she occasionally drew inspiration for her best-selling Heather Wells mystery series), Meg wrote The Princess Diaries series, which was made into several hit movies by Disney, despite been banned in several countries—as well as multiple US school libraries—for its frank and humorous depictions of female empowerment.
While over 25 million copies of Meg’s 100+ published books have been sold in 38 countries, Meg’s most proud of being banned for speaking out about women’s rights, and for the letters she’s received from fans thanking her for helping them to not only overcome their “dislike of reading,” but their feelings of depression.
Some of Meg’s other fan favorite books include the 1-800-Where-R-You? series (which has been reprinted under the title Vanished and made into the Lifetime series Missing), as well as All-American Girl; Ready or Not (Meg’s most banned book), and Avalon High (on which an original Disney Channel movie was based), and several books told entirely in emails and text messages (Boy Next Door/Boy Meets Girl/Every Boy’s Got One/The Boy is Back).
Meg’s first ever adult book in the Princess Diaries series, Royal Wedding, has turned into a popular gift for new brides. It was followed by Quarantine Princess Diaries in 2023. 10% of Meg’s proceeds from the sales of this book are going to real life royal Princess Mabel van Oranje of the Netherlands’ charity to end child marriage (www.vowforgirls.org). A new Princess Diaries series for younger readers, From the Notebook of a Middle School Princess, which Meg also illustrated, debuted in 2015, and was followed by three sequels.
In 2019, Meg authored a Black Canary graphic novel for DC Zoom for middle-grade readers with illustrator Cara McGee, and in 2026, she will launch a new graphic novel series for kids, The Detective Baby, with illustrator Amelia Allore. All of the books Meg’s two new adult contemporary series, one set on the fictional Little Bridge Island in the Florida Keys, and the other in the fictional village of West Harbor, CT, focus on a different couple and their sometimes humorous, sometimes serious romantic struggles, but are guaranteed to have a Happily Ever After (with plenty of sunshine, margaritas, and occasional magic spells).
Meg Cabot (her last name rhymes with habit, as in “her books can be habit forming”) currently lives in Key West, Florida with her husband and various cats. If you see her husband, please do not tell him that he married a fire horse, as he has not figured it out yet.
“For those who came of age during the early 2000s, Cabot helped redefine what books for girls and women could look like: She wrote them funny, messy—and so horny they’re still getting soft-banned all over the country.” — The Conversationalist