Alan Gratz

Biography

Alan Gratz (born 1972) is an American author from Knoxville, Tennessee, best known for fast-paced historical fiction aimed at middle-grade and young adult readers. He has said that Refugee began as a single story — the MS St. Louis — and grew to include the other timelines as he researched modern refugee crises and found the same patterns repeating. He spent years researching all three periods, interviewing refugees from Cuba and Syria, and consulting with historians of the Holocaust. The novel was published in 2017, at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis and amid political debate in the United States about refugee admissions.

Alan Gratz at a glance