Stephenie Meyer: A New J.K. Rowling?

Stephenie Meyer, a Mormon housewife turned novelist, is the new queen of fantasy

Illustration by Anita Kunz for TIME

Stephenie Meyer, a Mormon housewife turned novelist, is the new queen of fantasy..

Five years ago, on the night of June 1, 2003, a Phoenix housewife named Stephenie Meyer had a dream: a young woman was talking to a beautiful, sparkling man in a sunlit meadow. The man was a vampire. They were in love, and he was telling the girl how hard it was for him to keep from killing her.

Meyer had not written anything much before then. Her main creative outlets were scrapbooking and making elaborate Halloween costumes. But the dream was so vivid that she absolutely had to write it down. Then she kept on writing. She wrote the entire...

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