Nova Ren Suma is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling and #1 Indie Next Pick The Walls Around Us as well as A Room Away from the Wolves, both finalists for an Edgar Award, among other acclaimed novels. She was co-editor of the story & craft anthology FORESHADOW: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading & Writing YA and her own short stories appear in various anthologies. She is a MacDowell fellow, a Yaddo fellow, and has taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and Vermont College of Fine Arts. She grew up in the Hudson Valley and now lives in Philadelphia. Her new novel Wake the Wild Creatures is forthcoming from Little, Brown in May 2025.
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Longer bio:
Nova Ren Suma is a New York Times bestselling author and two-time Edgar Award finalist of strange and sometimes eerie novels as well as a teacher of creative writing. Her new novel Wake the Wild Creatures is forthcoming from Little, Brown in May 2025.
A Room Away from the Wolves was an Edgar Award finalist for Best Young Adult Novel and was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and School Library Journal and called “shiver-inducingly delicious” by The New York Times. The #1 New York Times bestselling The Walls Around Us was also an Edgar Award finalist for Best Young Adult Novel and named a #1 Indie Next Pick as well as a Best Book of the Year by The Boston Globe, NPR, School Library Journal, the Chicago Public Library, The Horn Book, and Book Riot.
Nova was co-editor-in-chief with Emily X.R. Pan of FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology, an online short story publication. The print edition, Foreshadow: Stories to Celebrate the Magic of Reading & Writing YA, features thirteen stories from the online project as well as new craft talks, essays, and interviews by Emily and Nova. It was published by Algonquin Young Readers.
Nova’s other books include the young adult novels Imaginary Girls (Dutton/PRH) and 17 & Gone (Dutton/PRH), both named Outstanding Books for the College Bound by YALSA. Her first novel, the middle-grade novel Dani Noir (S&S/Aladdin), was reissued in paperback for the YA shelves as Fade Out (Simon Pulse) and was named a Top 10 Editors’ Pick by Amazon. Her short story “The Birds of Azalea Street” appears in the YA horror anthology Slasher Girls & Monster Boys (Dial/PRH) and was reprinted in Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction 2015 (Kaleidoscope). She also has had short stories in the anthologies The House Where Death Lives (Page Street), Toil & Trouble (Harlequin Teen), and It’s a Whole Spiel (Knopf/PRH), as well as an essay in Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World (Algonquin).
Nova has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and a BA in writing & photography from Antioch College. She was a fellow in fiction with the New York Foundation for the Arts, a MacDowell Fellow, a Yaddo Fellow, and has been awarded residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, where she was awarded the Erik A. Takulan Memorial Endowed Fellowship, and the Millay Colony. She was selected to attend the 2012 Launch Pad Workshop, a NASA-funded astronomy workshop for writers, and was awarded an NEA fellowship for a residency at the Hambidge Center for Arts & Sciences.
She has a background in publishing and worked for years as a production editor and copy editor for children’s book publishers, including HarperCollins Children’s Books and Penguin Young Readers Group. Previous to that, she was an assistant editor in the X-Men office at Marvel Comics and an editorial & production associate at the small-press comics publisher RAW Books & Graphics and RAW Junior, working on the first Little Lit comics anthologies that eventually led to the creation of TOON Books.
Nova was core faculty in the low-residency Writing for Children & Young Adults MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and taught creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was one of the faculty selected to oversee a student apprentice for a Bassini Writing Apprenticeship hosted by the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at Penn. She’s also taught at Columbia University, Tin House, 24PearlStreet/Fine Arts Work Center, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Highlights Foundation, Blue Stoop, as well as a number of other workshops and retreats in various parts of the country.
She grew up in small towns across the Hudson Valley, spent most of her adult life in New York City, and now lives in Philadelphia.
Nova is represented by Michael Bourret at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.
For Nova’s upcoming workshops and classes, visit the Workshops page.
For bios for publicity purposes and high-resolution press photos, visit the Press page.