Meg Cabot

She has a keen interest in philanthropic activities and has worked with Make-a-Wish Foundation and the Starlight Children's Foundation to mentor seriously and terminally ill children. She also donates proceeds from the sales of her books to various charities.

Meg Cabot was born in Bloomington, Indiana. She had a difficult childhood as many members of her family including her father, grandmother, and uncle were alcoholics. However, she had a good relationship with her mother who encouraged her daughter’s artistic pursuits.

She was an avid reader who devoured comics, science fiction and fairy tales. She loved princess stories as they provided a means of escapism from the harsh realities of her childhood. During high school she began writing stories as a hobby.

She went to the University of Indiana to study art and graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1991.

She initially planned on becoming an illustrator and moved to New York City in order to pursue this dream. However, she found employment as an assistant manager of the freshman dormitory at the New York University.

She continued writing as a hobby even as she worked full-time. At around this time she decided to try her hand at getting published and sent her manuscripts to several publishers. For years she was met with rejection and disappointment.

Her first novel ‘Where Roses Grow Wild’ was published under her pseudonym Patricia Cabot in 1998. It was a historical romance. She followed the novel with two other romances ‘Portrait of My Heart’ and ‘An Improper Proposal’ published in 1999.

Around this time she also began working on a series on novels for younger adults called ‘The Princess Diaries’ in the chick-lit genre. The books are loosely based on her own experiences when her widowed mother began dating one of Meg’s teachers and later married him.

The first book in the series, ‘The Princess Diaries’ which revolved around the adventures of a girl named Mia who discovers that she is a princess, was rejected 17 times before being published by Harper Collins in 2000. The book became an instant hit and was a New York Times bestseller.

Her best known work is ‘The Princess Diaries’ series which has been published in more than 40 countries and has been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. The first book in the series was a bestseller which remained on the New York Times Bestseller’s list for 38 weeks.