Emmy Laybourne Books in Order

Emmy Laybourne was born in Somerville, New Jersey, in 1971 and grew up in Manhattan. Her father worked in television, and her mother was an executive at Nickelodeon, so stories and entertainment were close at hand. Laybourne started writing young, including an early story about an alien facing a rather alarming praying-mantis-style marriage.

She studied English and creative writing at Vassar College, graduating in 1993. Afterward, she worked as a production assistant at Comedy Central while spending her off-hours in New York's improv and sketch-comedy scene. She also performed with Freestyle Repertory Theatre, taking school shows around New York State.

Those audiences taught her that a story has to hold attention fast.

Laybourne began as a playwright and performer. She co-wrote The Miss Alphabet City Beauty Pageant and Spelling Bee, then created the one-woman sketch show Smorgas-Bourne, where audiences could choose which scenes they wanted to see. That work led to a part in the film Superstar, alongside Molly Shannon and Will Ferrell.

Writing was always part of the plan.

After roles in Lucky Numbers, The In-Laws, Nancy Drew, and the sitcom DAG, Laybourne decided to step away from acting after getting married and having children. She enrolled in UCLA's film school and earned an MFA in screenwriting in 2006. While there, she received the Eleanor Perry Award for her screenplay Tulum.

A move back to New York helped turn screenwriting ideas into a first novel. Laybourne pitched her agent a concept about fourteen young people trapped in a superstore while the world outside collapses. The idea became Monument 14, a survival story set in Colorado, where ordinary kids have to make hard choices, share limited resources, and build a fragile kind of family.

The Monument 14 books combine disaster suspense with the messy relationships of teens and younger children thrown together. In Sweet, she moved to a luxury cruise and a diet product with frightening effects, mixing celebrity culture, friendship, romance, and survival. Her later historical fantasy pair, Berserker and Ransacker, follows Norwegian siblings with inherited powers tied to old Norse gods as they try to make a life in the American West.

Her books often put young people in situations where there is no easy adult rescue coming. The pressure is high, but the characters still have to deal with loyalty, crushes, family trouble, fear, and the question of who they want to be.

Laybourne later moved with her family to Los Angeles. She lives there with her husband, two children, and dog, Bodhi, and has continued to bring her comedy and performance background into creative projects alongside her fiction.