Lisa Kleypas

born 1964

Lisa Kleypas was born in 1964 in Texas, USA, but when she was only a year old her family moved to Massachusetts, where she grew up with her brother Ki.

At 12, Lisa read her first romance novel "The Flame and the Flower" by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. And during the summer she was 16, she wrote her first manuscript and her parents sent her to a romance writers' conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where she decided be a romance writer.

She studied a political science degree at the Wellesley College, where she met Hillary (Rodham) Clinton. Lisa, who for years wore glasses and dental braces, so she considered herself an ugly duckling, was encouraged by her mother and named Miss Massachusetts in the Miss America competition in 1985.

Lisa always loved read romance novels, and during her summer breaks she started to write. Before her graduation, her father said she, that she need obtained a bona fide job, she couldn't spend the rest of her life writing in her parents' basement. Her parents agreed to support her for a few months so that she could finish a manuscript. She ended her novel two months after her gradutation, and she sent the manuscript to an agent, and he called within a day or two, and shortly thereafter it was sold to NAL, when she was only 21.

A full-time romance writer since the publishing of her first book. Her books are published in more than fourteen languages and have appeared on bestseller lists such as the New York Times, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and WaldenBooks. Well-know by her historical romances, many of her novels are setting in the 19th century, in the USA or in the Victorian England, but since 2007, she publishes also contemporany romances.

Married since 1986 with Gregory Ellis, Lisa has two children: a son, Griffin and a daughter, Lindsay. The family lives in Washington. She enjoys playing the guitar, reading and cooking (especially elaborate desserts).

Books