Stephanie Danler

Stephanie Danler (born 1983) is an American author. Her debut novel, Sweetbitter, was a New York Times bestseller and was adapted into a television show by the same name. She released a memoir, Stray, in 2020.

Life Danler grew up in Seal Beach, California. At age 16, she moved to Boulder, Colorado, to live with her father. She attended Kenyon College in Ohio.

Writing career In 2014, Danler secured a six-figure, two-book publication deal with Knopf. It earned a starred review in Kirkus and was a New York Times bestseller. A review in The New Yorker said that "Danler deftly captures the unique power of hierarchy in the restaurant world, the role of drug and alcohol abuse, and the sense of borrowed grandeur that pervades the serving scene." A television adaptation (Sweetbitter), created by Danler, Stuart Zicherman, and Plan B Entertainment, premiered on Starz in 2018 and aired for two seasons. In 2019, Danler was granted the Robert B. Heilman award by the Sewanee Review for her review of Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women.

In 2020, she published a memoir, Stray, about "familial dysfunction and addiction" and "the entanglement of love and disappointment." A review from the New Yorker noted that the memoir is “unsparing” but “tempered with the tenderness of Danler’s language, and with her willingness to reserve her harshest rebukes for herself.”

Works Sweetbitter (2016) Stray: A Memoir (2020)