Short Bio

Katherine Neville’s 20-year career as an international computer executive and consultant, principally in the fields of finance and energy, took her to live and work in six countries on three continents and half of the states in the U.S. She numbered among her clients and employers IBM, the Bank of America, OPEC, and the US Department of Energy. Katherine did her post-graduate studies in African Literature. She has worked as a commercial photographer, portrait painter, busboy, waiter, and model, and she draws from all these work experiences to enrich her novels.

Katherine’s books The Eight, A Calculated Risk, and The Magic Circle are bestsellers in more than thirty languages. Her colorful adventure-quest-thriller novels are hard to categorize. She has been described as the female Umberto Eco, the female Alexander Dumas, and the female Stephen Spielberg. Publishers Weekly has recently (Spring 2008) described her books as having paved the way for books like The Da Vinci Code. In a national poll by the noted journal El Pais, in Spain, The Eight was voted one of the top ten books of all time.

Katherine has been a guest or speaker at interesting venues around the world including the Today show; Publishers Weekly; Voice of America; National Public Radio; The Georgia Tech Women’s Leadership Conference; the Edgar Allan Poe and the Agatha Christie Awards; The Ateneo de Madrid; the Turkish Culture Ministry in Ankara and the First International Rumi Symposium in Konya, Turkey; The Smithsonian in Washington D.C.; and the World Affairs Conference in Boulder, CO.

Katherine is an annual co-chair of the Authors Guild Foundation banquet in New York, and she is on the cabinet or director’s circle of a number of noted institutions such as the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of American Art, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Poplar Forest. She is a sponsoring founder of the International Thriller Writers.

Katherine lives in Virginia, Washington DC and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Short Intro

Question: What do you get when you cross Umberto Eco, Alexandre Dumas and Steven Spielberg? Answer: Katherine Neville, of course!

Katherine Neville, award-winning, best-selling author of The Eight (which was voted one of the top ten books of all time in a national poll by the noted journal El Pais), as well as A Calculated Risk, The Magic Circle and her latest thriller  The Fire. Her novels have been translated into more than 35 languages and enthrall millions of readers around the world. Publishers Weekly described her books as having paved the way for books like The Da Vinci Code.

Neville’s groundbreaking novel, The Eight, dazzled readers over 20 years ago and set the literary stage for an epic thriller—the quest for a mystical chess service that once belonged to Charlemagne and that intertwines historic and modern plots, archaeological treasure hunts, esoteric riddles, and puzzles encrypted with clues from the ancient past. Now the electrifying global adventure continues in her long anticipated sequel: The Fire.

Neville’s experience in the world of finance and energy is breathtaking, and she’s drawn from her escapades as a commercial photographer, portrait painter, busboy, waiter, and model to enrich her novels. She has appeared or spoken on the Today show, Voice of America, National Public Radio and numerous conferences and award programs.