Jill Santopolo
Jill Santopolo is an American author and children’s book editor whose adult debut novel The Light We Lost, published in 2017, became a major international bestseller, translated into more than thirty languages and praised for its emotionally devastating portrait of a decades-long love story. Born in New York, Santopolo earned her B.A. from Columbia University and her M.F.A. in creative writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has spent her professional life in publishing, working as an executive editor specializing in children’s and young adult literature.
Her career in children’s publishing includes work with major authors and series. She is the author of the Sparkle Spa and Alec Flint middle-grade series for younger readers. But it is The Light We Lost that established her as a novelist of major commercial and emotional reach for adult readers.
The novel follows Lucy and Gabe, who meet on September 11, 2001, as Columbia undergraduates watching the towers fall from the roof of a campus building. Their connection that day begins a relationship that spans thirteen years, as their lives diverge geographically and professionally but their emotional bond persists. The novel is told entirely in Lucy’s voice, addressed directly to Gabe, in a second-person narration that gives the love story an intimacy and ache that readers have found devastatingly effective. The book draws inevitable comparisons to One Day by David Nicholls and Me Before You by Jojo Moyes.
Santopolo’s second novel for adults, More Than Words (2019), also received warm critical and commercial attention. She continues to work in publishing and to write fiction, and is recognized as one of the most successful authors at the intersection of literary and commercial women’s fiction.
