Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel is a Canadian novelist and essayist. She has written six novels, including Station Eleven (2014) and The Glass Hotel (2020). Station Eleven, which has been translated into 33 languages, has been adapted into a limited series on HBO Max. The Glass Hotel was translated into twenty languages and was selected by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2020. Her novel, Sea of Tranquility, was published in April 2022 and debuted at number three on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Mandel was born in the spring of 1979 in Merville, British Columbia, Canada. Her Canadian mother is a social worker, and her American father is a plumber. St. John, her grandmother’s surname, is her middle name. When she was ten years old, she moved with her parents and four siblings to Denman Island, which is 20 miles (32 km) south of Merville near Union Bay. She was home-schooled there until the age of fifteen, during which time she began keeping a daily diary. She left high school when she was eighteen to study contemporary dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre.

She worked with independent choreographers. She was also an administrative assistant at a Manhattan law firm and helped with grants at the Anderson Center for Cancer Research at Rockefeller University. In 2002, Mandel began writing her first novel, Last Night in Montreal, while living in Montreal. She is a staff writer for The Millions, an online magazine. 

In 2012, she used the Goodreads database to write an article for The Millions, analyzing statistics relating to novels with titles in "The ___'s Daughter" pattern. In 2016, she wrote a subsequent article analyzing statistics relating to novels that included the word "girl" in the title. One of her findings was that the girl of the title is "significantly more likely to end up dead" if the author of the book is male.

Mandel's first three novels are Last Night in Montreal (2009), The Singer's Gun (2009), and The Lola Quartet (2012). Unbridled Books published all three novels. Last Night in Montreal follows a young woman with a secret who cannot seem to settle in one city. When she is pursued by a private detective and a former lover, she is forced to come to terms with her own past and the secrets that haunt a childhood she cannot remember.

The Singer's Gun tells the story of Anton Waker, who grew up surrounded by corruption but has now decided to live a more honorable life. His life unravels when his cousin blackmails him into doing one last job. As a result, his forged Harvard diploma is revealed, and his secretary disappears. Anton must choose between his loyalty to his family and his desire to live life with integrity.

The Lola Quartet is a literary noir novel that takes place in Florida following the 2008 economic collapse. Gavin, a recently fired journalist and former jazz musician, is contacted by his sister, who believes she has discovered a daughter he never knew he had. Jobless, Gavin returns to his hometown and begins searching for his unknown child and the supposed mother—his high school girlfriend.

After studying dance, Mandel lived in Toronto and Montreal before relocating to New York City. She married Kevin Mandel, a writer and an executive recruiter. They have a daughter. They separated in April 2022 and received a divorce decree in November 2022. As of 2022, she lives in Brooklyn and has a girlfriend.