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Erin Morgenstern

Author of The Night Circus and The Starless Sea

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  • About Erin Morgenstern

    Erin Morgenstern is the author of The Night Circus, a number-one national best seller that has been sold around the world and translated into thirty-seven languages.  The Night Circusiz  a fantastical novel that follows the impossible love of two magicians as they engage in a deadly game of cunning.  The Night Circus spent seven weeks on The New York Times bestseller List and was recognized with the 2012 Alex Award, given by the Young Adult Library Services Association, as well as the 2012 Locus Award for First Novel.

    Her latest book, The Starless Sea, was an instant New York Times bestseller hailed as “a richly imaginative ode to books and storytelling” by People. . A timeless love story, The Starless Sea is set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and quests.

    Erin Morgenstern mesmerizes crowds with tales of the “Cirques de Rêves,” on which her debut novel, The Night Circus, is based. Her unique creativity, boundless imagination, and the immersive worlds of her fiction make her a favorite for community reads, book clubs, and libraries.

    In addition to her writing and speaking, Erin Morgenstern also paints and blogs. She graduated from Smith College with a degree in theater and studio art.

    Contact us for more information about booking Erin Morgenstern for your next event. 

  • Speaking Topics

    An Evening with Erin Morgenstern

    In her captivating lectures, interspersed with readings from her bestselling books The Night Circus and The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern leads audiences through her writing process and the singularly immersive and imaginative worlds of her fiction.

  • Video

  • Praise for Erin Morgenstern

    Praise for The Starless Sea

    A mythical tale…a story about stories, all essentially relating to Fate and Time. Morgenstern nests a glittering trove of meta-narratives, myths, folkloric fables within a main storyline about a hero’s quest. The Starless Sea is the kind of book that could spawn a Harry Potter-esque cult. I can imagine fan sites devoted to mapping, analyzing and connecting the dots among its fantastical intricacies. I predict readers for whom it will become a holy of holies, one of their most treasured books of all time. It’s that kind of book.

    Newsday 

    A richly imaginative ode to books and storytelling…this fantasy-filled novel entwines a mysterious underground world with the story of a grad student on a quest to understand his past.”

    People

    From the author of The Night Circus comes a wildly fanciful lark that has all the hits: mystery, love, libraries, Harry Potter references, and pirates. It’s a complex, darkly beautiful story with some of the most inventive storytelling we’ve read all year.

    Good Housekeeping, Best Book of 2019

    The most joyous reading experience I’ve had in recent memory… It is, not to put too fine a point on it, wonderful…  a master-class in plotting and prestidigitation… unabashedly romantic… a warm, honeyed bath of words and ideas.

    Robert Wiersema, The Toronto Star 

    Assuredly beautiful… The novel reads like panel after panel of mythic illustrations… It demands that its readers interpret it in an older way; the way we read The Faerie Queene… Well-written… The novel’s scope and ambition are undeniable.

    Natasha Pulley, The Guardian

    A mystical adventure in an enchanted universe… The novel is not simply a quest narrative–it’s also a meta-examination of stories that demands the reader’s patience–and then rewards it… Morgenstern’s elegant, poetic prose keeps the pages turning as she begins to draw connections within a web of tales that reads like an ode to stories, themselves, and celebrates the distinct pleasure that comes from engaging with a text. For Zachary, that pleasure outweighs any temptation he might have to return to school and his regular life. It leads, instead, to a journey of sacrifice and self-discovery as he unearths his own place in the puzzling book’s narrative. For everyone else, the thrill comes from watching him on the ride.

    Annabel Gutterman, Time

    Erin Morgenstern has magic to make… the author returns with a new fantastical fairy-tale for grown-ups… Comparisons to the likes of Tolkien, Carroll, and C.S. Lewis abound. The Starless Sea poses big questions about stories — the ones we read, the ones we live, and the ones we tell ourselves. And at the heart of her work lies the themes that have provoked those comparisons: redemption, sacrifice, fate, time, reincarnation…. We’re willing to bet the embrace of this deeper, darker, more complex follow-up novel might be close to a sure thing. As Morgenstern posits, The Starless Sea is a door to another world — one just waiting for readers to open it.

    Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly

    A magnificent quest, a sense of unfolding adventure and danger, gold-wrought fantasy, and endless provocation on what storytelling really means.

    Library Journal, starred review

    A high-wire feat of metatextual derring-do [and] a stunning array of linked fables, myths and origin stories. . . . It is exquisitely pleasurable to watch the gears of this epic fantasy turn once they’re set in motion. As in The Night Circus, Morgenstern is at her best when she imagines worlds and rooms and parties in vivid detail. . . . This novel is a love letter to readers as much as an invitation: Come and see how much magic is left in the world. Fans of Neil Gaiman and V.E. Schwab, Kelly Link and Susanna Clarke will want to heed the call. An ambitious and bewitching gem of a book with mystery and passion inscribed on every page.

    Kirkus Reviews, starred review

    Morgenstern’s new fantasy epic is a puzzlebox of a book, full of meta-narratives and small folkloric tales that will delight readers. . . . Morgenstern uses poetic, honey-like prose to tell a story that plays with the very concept of what we expect and want from our stories. . . . She trusts her readers to follow along and speculate, wonder and make leaps themselves . . . giving the book a mythic quality that will stick with readers long after they put it down. The massive legion of readers who loved Morgenstern’s debut will be clamoring to recapture the magic of that reading experience.

    Booklist, starred review

    This love letter to bibliophiles is dreamlike and uncanny, grounded in deeply felt emotion, and absolutely thrilling.

    Publishers Weekly, starred review

    A page-turner. . . . It’s unlikely [The Night Circus fans] will be disappointed by this sweeping follow-up, which unfolds an epic romance within a secret underground world of lost cities, handsome pirates and endless puzzles to be solved.

    Entertainment Weekly

    Praise for The Night Circus

    Magical. Enchanting. Spellbinding. Mesmerizing.

    Associated Press

    Erin Morgenstern has created the circus I have always longed for and she has populated it with dueling love-struck magicians, precocious kittens, hyper-elegant displays of beauty and complicated clocks. This is a marvelous book.

    Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife
  • Books by Erin Morgenstern

  • Media About Erin Morgenstern

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