Emily St. John Mandel is a Canadian novelist and essayist. She is best known for her 2014 novel Station Eleven, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Toronto Book Award. Her other works include The Glass Hotel, The Singer’s Gun, and Last Night in Montreal. Mandel was born in British Columbia and grew up in Toronto. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and worked as an actor, a waitress, and a bartender before turning to writing. Her first novel, Last Night in Montreal, was published in 2009. Mandel’s writing is often described as lyrical and dreamlike, and her stories often explore themes of memory, loss, and the fragility of human life. Her work has been praised for its vivid characters and its exploration of the human condition. She has been compared to authors such as Margaret Atwood and Cormac McCarthy. Mandel is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Globe and Mail. She has also been featured in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. She currently lives in New York City with her husband and two children.