Airhead: Being Nikki

Meg Cabot

Meg Cabot is the author of The Princess Diaries series as well as several other novels for teenagers. Her books have sold millions of copies round the world - and two million in the UK alone.

Cabot was born in Bloomington, Indiana, to college professor C. Victor and Barbara Cabot. In 1991, Cabot received a B.A. from Indiana University.

Meg Cabot married financial writer and poet Benjamin D. Egnatz on April 1, 1993. Their wedding date (April Fool’s Day) was a deliberate play on her husband's belief that only fools get married in the first place. The wedding was actually an elopement in Italy. Her novel Every Boy's Got One is loosely based on her own elopement.

Before she published her first book, Meg worked as an assistant dorm manager at New York University. After living in Indiana, California, New York, and France, she now currently resides in Key West, Florida. She splits her time between an apartment in New York, New York, and a barn in Bloomington, Indiana.

In May 2006, the Harvard Crimson released reports that 19-year-old author Kaavya Viswanathan borrowed passages from Cabot's Princess Diaries series, and other books, to place in her novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. Viswanathan's novels were subsequently pulled from the shelves.

Cabot has also written many books for teens, including The Princess Diaries series, which has won many awards, and her recently completed series, The Mediator.

She has lived in various parts of the US and France, but now lives in Key West, Florida, with her husband and one-eyed cat, Henrietta.

Author photo: Ali Smith