Katherine Neville’s 20-year data processing career, in the fields of energy and transportation, took her to live and work in seven countries on three continents, and half the states of the USA. Between jobs, she supported herself as a busboy and waiter, fashion model, commercial photographer, and professional artist. When her first book, The Eight, was published (1988) she left the computer world and became a full-time author.
Neville’s groundbreaking work defies categorization. She has been dubbed “the female” Umberto Eco, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, and Stephen Spielberg. The Washington Post called her first book, The Eight, “a feminist answer to Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Publishers Weekly predicted that The Eight was “destined to become a cult classic,” andmore recently, credited her work as having “paved the way for books like The Da Vinci Code.”
Her colorful, complex adventure/quest novels have been translated into 40 languages, have received multiple awards and honors, and have remained on bestseller lists around the world. (See Awards, Honors & Bestsellers.)
As a great supporter of libraries and books, Neville was the first author ever invited onto the Advisory Board of the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington, DC, where she has served a full three terms and is now emerita. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Authors Guild Foundation in New York. She is co-creator and sponsor of two international Library Awards, and co-producer of a series of short film clips by famous authors, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Smithsonian Libraries.
Katherine Neville resides in Washington, DC and Virginia where she has restored the fabled 1960s house and studio of an award-winning Japanese potter, and where she is completing her new novel about artists in the 1600s.