Michelle Knudsen

Michelle Knudsen is a New York Times best-selling American children's author. She has written more than 50 books for children, including the multiple-award-winning Library Lion, the Trelian middle grade fantasy trilogy, and the Evil Librarian young adult horror/comedy/romance trilogy.

Knudsen graduated from Cornell University and received an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She currently teaches in the University of San Francisco's MFA program in Writing for Young Readers.

Biography

Knudsen is a New York Times best-selling author of more than 50 books for young readers, including board books, picture books, early readers, and middle grade and young adult novels. She is the author of the award-winning picture book Library Lion, which has been translated into twenty languages, is being performed as a musical stage production in Boston, and was selected by Time Magazine as one of the 100 Best Children's Books of All Time. She is also the author of the middle grade fantasy novel Into the Wild Magic (winner of the 2025 Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction); the Trelian trilogy of fantasy novels (The Dragon of Trelian, The Princess of Trelian, and The Mage of Trelian); and the Evil Librarian trilogy of young adult novels, the first of which was awarded the 2015 Sid Fleischman Award for Humor and has been adapted into a musical for the stage by Landless Theatre Company. Knudsen also works as a freelance editor and writing teacher, and is a member of the MFA in Writing for Young Readers faculty at the University of San Francisco. She lives in Brooklyn, New York City.

Awards

Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction - Into the Wild Magic