Lisa Kleypas

Lisa Kleypas (born November 5, 1964) is an American author of historical and contemporary romance novels. Before embarking on a literary career, she was named Miss Massachusetts 1985 and competed in the Miss America 1986 pageant in Atlantic City.

Biography

Lisa Kleypas was born on November 5, 1964 in Temple, Texas, to Linda and Lloyd Kleypas, an architect. She spent her childhood between Watertown and Carlisle after her family moved to Massachusetts when she was three. Between the ages of twelve and twenty-four she lived in the Concord and Lexington area. She started writing at sixteen, during a summer camp at Wellesley College; her parents encouraged her, sending her to a writers' conference in Bretton Woods. For the next five years, Kleypas wrote a new work every summer, none of which she deemed publishable, and turned to romance novels set during the English Regency after becoming fascinated by a course on the Georgian era at Boston College. In 1986 she participated in Miss America with the Miss Massachusetts sash, after which she concentrated on her studies, graduating in political science from Wellesley College three months after selling her first novel to a publishing house.

In October 1998, Kleypas's Texas home flooded and her family lost everything except the clothes they were wearing. Her colleagues sent clothes and books. After the flood, she and her mother (whose home had also flooded), made a trip to purchase necessities. Separately, each of them also chose a romance novel, a necessity to them in helping them escape the stress they were currently under. To Kleypas, this realization validated her decision to write romance novels instead of more literary works.

Though primarily known for her historical romance novels, Kleypas made an announcement in early 2006 concerning her momentary departure from historical romances to delve into the contemporary romance genre. Her debut contemporary novel, Sugar Daddy, reached the New York Times bestsellers list.

In 2020, Kleypas was diagnosed with cancer and took a break to undergo thyroid removal surgery. As she focused on recovering, she decided to take a career risk and move slightly away from the romance genre with her comeback novel, Queen of Lombard Street: described as a historical novel rather than a romance one about a woman trying to start a women's bank in the Victorian era, it was released on October 20, 2026.

Personal life

Kleypas lives in Palm Desert, California with her husband, entrepreneur Gregory Ellis. They have two children.

Style

Kleypas's inspirations include Wuthering Heights and E. M. Forster, as well as her contemporary writers Laura Kinsale, Loretta Chase, and Kathleen Woodiwiss. She grew up close to Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House, which she visited often, and Little Women was the novel that made her want to become an author. In 1997, she credited Woodiwiss with inspiring her to write romance: "... I was introduced to the romance genre by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss' first book, The Flame and the Flower... This wonderful experience led me to read many other romance novels, and eventually to write my own. If it hadn't been for Kathleen's vibrantly soaring work, I might never have tried my own wings." She also believes that reading biographies enriches her as a writer, as much as reading reviews of her books, claiming that a critique of Somewhere I'll Find You which described it as "lacking urgency" "changed [her] for the better as a writer".

Kleypas's participation in beauty pageants influenced her characterization, leading her to never write physically perfect and self-confident heroines, while for the heroes of her stories she prefers a "masculine man who is able to express himself well but never speaks in flowery prose. He possesses innate strength of character and is self-made or has risen above difficult circumstances. Eventually he loves the heroine with a Heathcliff-level of intensity, and demonstrates this both verbally and physically". In her plots she often uses misfits and outsiders who try to fit in, such as non-aristocratic heroes and out-of-place heroines, who are ultimately appreciated for who they are. For romance, Kleypas believes that the two lovers should encourage each other to pursue their individual goals and that the heroine should improve as a person thanks to the presence of the hero in her life. In her novel Dreaming of You, the female protagonist "experiences an entirely different world thanks to her relationship with the hero, and is forever transformed into a new and different person. ... Moreover, Kleypas goes one step forward and depicts the hero's transformation as well, a transformation that involves his own awakening and adoption of traditional female characteristics." As her career progressed, Kleypas began to add more history into her historical romance novels: for the Ravenels series, she was inspired by the achievements of Victorian women such as inventor Elizabeth Magie and doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson to create female protagonists who seek professional fulfillment outside of marriage, and she consciously decided not to include the heroine expecting a child or having become a mother in the finale of Devil in Spring.