Audrey Niffenegger (born June 13, 1963) is an American writer, artist and academic. Her debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, published in 2003, was a bestseller.
Audrey Niffenegger was born in 1963 in South Haven, Michigan. Then she moved to Evanston, Illinois and has since spent a majority of her life in Chicago. Niffenegger started writing books when she was six years old. Niffenegger completed her undergraduate degree at the Art Institute of Chicago where she worked on becoming a visual artist. After completing her undergraduate degree, she got her M.F.A at Northwestern University. Niffenegger is currently a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, where she co-founded the Columbia College Chicago Center for the Book and Paper Arts. Niffenegger is also the founding member of T3 or Text 3, an artist and writer's group which also performs and exhibits in Chicago. She is an alumna and board member of the Ragdale Foundation. She started making books herself by using processes such as intaglio and letterpress. She also wrote many novels which were produced on an offset press.
Niffenegger's debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, was published in 2003 and was a bestseller. A film adaptation was released in 2009. Niffenegger has no intention of watching the movie because she stated that the characters are only truly hers in the book, not in the movie. Niffenegger originally conceptualized The Time Traveler's Wife as a graphic novel but realized that the time travel would be difficult to capture in visualizations.
In March 2009, Niffenegger sold her second novel, a literary ghost story called Her Fearful Symmetry, to Charles Scribner's Sons for an advance of $5 million. The book was released on October 1, 2009 and is set in London's Highgate Cemetery where, during research for the book, Niffenegger acted as a tour guide. Though not as huge a commercial juggernaut as The Time Traveler's Wife, this book generally garnered more positive critical reviews and cinched Niffenegger's reputation as a leading novelist of ideas and atmosphere.

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