Francesca Zappia Books in Order

Francesca Zappia grew up in Wanamaker, Indiana, and has lived in Indiana her whole life. She graduated from Franklin Central High School, then went to the University of Indianapolis, where she studied computer science and mathematics and later earned an MBA. That mix of technical training and storytelling has stayed with her.

She started telling stories when she was eight.

At first she told them with drawings. As she got older, words became the better tool, and she has said that when she reads, books play like movies in her head. She wanted to do that for other people. She has also pointed to her friends, her family, and the Harry Potter books as early inspirations, which makes sense for a writer so interested in belonging, obsession, and worlds that feel bigger on the inside.

Her debut novel, Made You Up, arrived in 2015. It follows Alex, a teenager trying to tell reality from delusion, and it showed right away what Zappia does well: sharp humor, emotional messiness, and a plot that keeps shifting under the reader's feet. The book helped put her on the map and later won her an Indiana Authors Award for Emerging Authors in 2017.

A lot of readers first found her through Eliza and Her Monsters. That novel takes the life of a shy, anxious webcomic creator and treats online fandom as something real, complicated, and sometimes overwhelming. Zappia even threads in her own illustrations, along with forum posts and fanfiction, so the book feels built from the same internet it is talking about. Its companion, Evie and Her Nightmares, returns to that larger world through grief, gaming, and the urge to disappear into an online self when real life hurts too much.

She does not stay in one genre for long.

With Now Entering Addamsville, she leans into small-town mystery, old grudges, and ghost-hunting energy. Katzenjammer turns school into a full nightmare, all body horror, missing memories, and social cruelty made literal. Then Greymist Fair moves into dark fantasy, using interconnected stories and Grimm-inspired woods to build a place that feels old, eerie, and strangely tender at the same time.

Across those books, some patterns keep coming back. Zappia writes about kids who feel out of step with the people around them, whether they are hiding inside fandom, stuck in grief, or trying to survive a town that has already decided who they are. Mental health, bullying, loneliness, family strain, and the stories people tell to protect themselves all matter in her work. Even when the setup gets weird, the feelings underneath it are plain and human.

She has described the stories she writes as the ones she would want to read, and that feels like a good guide to her range. They can be funny, odd, campy, bleak, romantic, and deeply online, sometimes all in the same book. She also draws, reads widely, and runs a Dungeons and Dragons game, which helps explain why her novels often feel so visual and so interested in how people build worlds together.

These days she still lives in Indiana. She spends her free time baking, playing video games, and watching terrible movies, and she has written about loving her dog, Gus, and her cat, Carl. She was also recognized again by the Indiana Authors Awards in 2024. The mix feels very Francesca Zappia, grounded, a little nerdy, and always ready to turn everyday life into story.