Tahereh Mafi

Tahereh Mafi (November 10, 1988) is an Iranian-American author based in Santa Monica, California. She is known for writing young adult fiction.

Early life

Mafi was born on November 9, 1988, in a small town in Connecticut. She is the youngest child of her family and has four older brothers. Mafi's parents are immigrants from Iran. At age 12 she moved with her family to Northern California and at age 14 they moved to Orange County.

Mafi graduated from University High School in Irvine, California. She later graduated from the Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo, California. She has varying levels of competency in eight different languages. She studied abroad in Barcelona, Spain for a semester in college. During this trip she had the opportunity to be fully immersed in the Spanish language.

Career

Mafi stated that before writing her first novel, Shatter Me, she wrote five manuscripts in order to better understand how to write a book.

Shatter Me was published on November 15, 2011. Since then, Unravel Me (published on February 5, 2013) and Ignite Me (published on February 4, 2014) have been released. Mafi has 5 novellas that go with the Shatter Me series, Destroy Me, Fracture Me, Shadow Me, Reveal Me, and Believe Me. Film rights to Shatter Me have been purchased by 20th Century Fox.

In August 2016 Mafi released Furthermore, a middle-grade fiction novel about a pale girl living in a world of great color and magic of which she has none.

In April 2017, Mafi announced another trilogy in the Shatter Me universe following the same cast of characters. The first installment, Restore Me, is told from a dual-POV from Juliette Ferrars and Warner, the protagonist and antagonist, respectively, in the original trilogy. Restore Me was published on March 6, 2018.

Mafi's next book, A Very Large Expanse of Sea, was released on October 16, 2018. It was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Personal life

Mafi currently resides in Irvine, California, where she continues to write. In 2013 she married author Ransom Riggs. In March 2017, Mafi announced via Twitter that she was pregnant. She gave birth to a daughter, Layla, on 30 May 2017. She identifies as Muslim.