Stephanie Kuehn is an American author of young adult fiction, best known for her William C. Morris Award-winning debut novel Charm & Strange, Delicate Monsters, and Complicit. Her novels often explore themes of mental illness and psychology.^[1]

Kuehn wanted to be a filmmaker as a teen and grew up in Berkeley, California.^[2] She grew up reading books by V.C. Andrews and Peter Straub.^[3]

Kuehn attended John F. Kennedy University and the University of California, Santa Cruz.^[4] She has a bachelor's degree in linguistics, a master's degree in sports psychology, and a doctorate in clinical psychology.^[5][4]

Her background as a psychologist is one of the reasons why many of her novels have narrators who are dealing with mental health issues.^[6]

She currently lives in Northern California with her husband and three children.^[7]

Her debut young adult novel, Charm & Strange, was published by St. Martin's Griffin in 2014 and tells the story of a teenage athlete who believes he might be a werewolf.^[8] Charm & Strange won the William C. Morris Award in 2014^[9] and was nominated for a Carnegie Medal in 2014.^[10]

Delicate Monsters, her sophomore novel, about the intersecting lives of three troubled teenagers, was published in 2015 by St. Martin's Griffin.^[11] It won the Northern California Book Award in the category Children's Fiction for Older Readers in 2016.^[12]

Her third novel, Complicit, about a teen dealing with the aftermath of his sister burning down a barn and being sentenced to juvenile detention, was published by St. Martin's Griffin in 2016.^[13] Complicit was also on Booklist's 2014 Top 10 Crime Fiction for Youth,^[14] the 2015 Reading List of the Texas Library Association,^[15] YALSA's 2015 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults list,^[16] and YALSA's 2017 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults list.^[17] Complicit was also nominated for a Kentucky Bluegrass Award in 2016^[18] and a Rhode Island Teen Book Award in 2016.^[19]

Kuehn's fourth novel, The Smaller Evil, is about a teen who arrives at a self-help center to deal with his anxiety and chronic illness, but stumbled into strange happenings when the retreat leader appears not to be who he seems.^[20] The Smaller Evil was published by Dutton in 2016.^[21] It received a starred review from School Library Journal^[22] Kuehn was awarded the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for The Smaller Evil in 2015.^[23]

Her fifth novel, When I Am Through With You, was published by Dutton in 2017.^[24] It received a starred review from Kirkus magazine.^[25]