Katherine Applegate

Katherine Alice Applegate, who also publishes as K. A. Applegate, is an American author of children's and young adult fiction, born on October 9, 1956, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She writes in English, and her name is most closely linked to the novel The One and Only Ivan, which won the Newbery Medal in 2013.

She studied at the University of Texas at Austin and has lived in several states, including Texas, Florida, California, Illinois and North Carolina, as well as spending a year in Pelago, Italy. Before publishing under her own name she worked as a ghostwriter for the Sweet Valley Twins series. She is married to Michael Grant, with whom she has co-written projects such as Animorphs, Everworld and Remnants, often under the shared name K. A. Applegate. Some of her books also appeared under pen names.

Her best-known series fall into science fiction, fantasy and adventure. After finishing Remnants she took a break of about three years, then returned with the picture book The Buffalo Storm, the middle-grade novel Home of the Brave, which won the SCBWI Golden Kite Award in 2008, and the early reader series Roscoe Riley Rules. Her writing aims for a close, accessible voice for young readers. In Ivan she takes the perspective of an animal, asking readers to see both animals and themselves in a different light.

Her legacy lies in American children's publishing of the 1990s and 2000s, when her series held the attention of many young readers, and in her work giving voice to stories told from non-human points of view. A film based on Ivan was released in 2020, and the story continued in several sequels.