-
Access Our
Best Book Club
Books of 2025!
An Na was born in South Korea and grew up in San Diego, California. As a young person, she never imagined that she would grow up to be a writer. First, she thought she was supposed to be a doctor, but then after realizing how many years of schooling it would take, she moved her sights to being a pharmacist. In college, after taking political science and chemistry, being a lawyer started looking really good. It was only during her senior year in college, when she took a children's literature class, did she discover her true love of writing. Having always been an avid reader, it had never dawned on her until that class that real people wrote books. Ding!
Na left college with a clear goal to write and publish picture books. In the meantime, to keep her parents off her back, she worked as an English and history teacher for middle schoolers, pastry chef, video store clerk, ticket taker for Cirque du Soleil, and scared substitute for kindergarteners. After a few years of working, she went back to school and received her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from VCFA. Her first novel, A Step From Heaven, was written during her time there and went on to be published, garnering awards such as the: Michael L. Printz Award, International Reading Association Award, National Book Award Finalist, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, and New York Times Book Review Notable. Wait for Me and The Fold followed a few years after along with two beautiful daughters. Writers can birth multiple entities, but not at the same time.
Na currently lives in Vermont, and teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts in the Writing for Children and Young Adult's MFA program. When she is not reading, writing, teaching or moming, she likes to run away from her chickens, make lots of food for gatherings and play amateur architect.
An Na's website
This bio was last updated on 04/17/2018. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
Before becoming a writer, Jeff Garvin acted in films and TV and was the front man of a nationally touring rock band. He is the author of Symptoms of Being Human, which was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and was also named ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Place Between Breaths
Try:
The Lightness of Hands
by Jeff Garvin
John Green is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All The Way Down. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Place Between Breaths
Try:
Turtles All the Way Down
by John Green
We recommend 6 similar authors
A library is thought in cold storage
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
