Taylor was born in Chico, California, grew up as a US military kid in Europe and California, and earned her English degree from UC Berkeley. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter.[2] She always wanted to be a writer, and was 35 before she finished her first novel.[3]
In 2004, she wrote a graphic novel for Image Comics, illustrated by her husband, Jim Di Bartolo.[4] Her first novel, Dreamdark: Blackbringer, was published in 2007. The sequel, Dreamdark: Silksinger, was a winner of the 2009 Cybil Award.[5] In 2011, she published Daughter of Smoke and Bone, a young adult fantasy series. The first book in the series was chosen by Amazon as the Best Teen Book of 2011,[6] and the sequel, Days of Blood and Starlight, was also on the list in 2012.[7] In 2017, she published Strange the Dreamer, followed by its sequel Muse of Nightmares in 2018, in which protagonist Lazlo Strange, a scribe and polyglot, journeys to the Lost City of Weep. Taylor created a unique language for this world, which she weaves into the plot. Strange the Dreamer became a Michael L. Printz Honor Book[8] as well as the 2018 Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature.[9]
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