Leigh Bardugo is an American author best known for the Grishaverse, a fantasy universe rooted in a richly imagined world drawing on Russian folklore and imperial aesthetics.
Her debut novel Shadow and Bone introduced readers to Alina Starkov, an orphaned mapmaker who discovers a rare and powerful ability, and launched a series that has since expanded across multiple trilogies and standalone works. Her Six of Crows duology, set in the same universe but following a crew of criminals planning an impossible heist, is widely considered her finest work - a tightly plotted, character-driven story that broadened her readership significantly and demonstrated a range beyond her debut.
Bardugo has continued to develop the Grishaverse with the King of Scars duology and has written outside it with Ninth House and its sequel Hell Bent, darker adult fiction set at Yale University among secret societies and the supernatural.
