Stephenie Meyer was born in Connecticut in 1973 before her family moved to Phoenix when she was four. She is the second eldest of six children, consisting of three girls and three boys. She went to high school in Scottsdale, where she achieved a National Merit Scholarship that paid her way to Brigham Young University in Utah. She majored in English literature despite being made fun of for having a future in food service (she now laughs at those who told her that). She met her husband, Pancho – real name Christian, when she was four, but never befriended him until she was twenty. They married nine months later. After being married for 11 years, they have three boys, whom Stephenie says reminds her of “chimpanzees on crack.”

Stephanie is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and says that it has a huge influence on who she is as well as on her perspective of the world and thus influences what she writes.

Stephenie lists of her favorite authors/biggest influences as being: Orson Scott Card, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Maeve Binchy, Charlotte Bronte, Daphne DuMaurier, L. M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Eva Ibbotson, William Goldman, Douglas Adams, and Janet Evanovich. She also says that she cannot write without music and tells of her biggest muse being the band Muse. She also claims Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, Coldplay, The All American Rejects, Travis, The Strokes, Brand New, U2, Kasabian, Jimmy Eat World, and Weezer as other sources of musical inspiration.

After writing the novel Twilight, Stephenie was chosen by booksellers as one of the most promising new authors of 2005. Twilight became a New York Times Editor's Choice, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, an Amazon “Best Book of the Decade…So Far,” a Teen People “Hot List” pick, an American Library Association “Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults” and “Top Ten Books for Reluctant Readers” and has been translated into twenty languages.