Lisa Kleypas was born on November 5, 1964. She is an American writer who creates books about historical and contemporary romance. Before she began writing, she was named Miss Massachusetts in 1985. She also participated in the Miss America 1986 contest in Atlantic City.
Biography
Lisa Kleypas was born on November 5, 1964, in Temple, Texas, to Linda and Lloyd Kleypas, who was an architect. She grew up in Watertown and Carlisle, Massachusetts, after her family moved there when she was three years old. From age twelve to twenty-four, she lived in the Concord and Lexington area. She began writing at sixteen during a summer camp at Wellesley College. Her parents supported her by sending her to a writers’ conference in Bretton Woods. For the next five years, Kleypas wrote a new work every summer, but she thought none of them were good enough to publish. She later became interested in romance novels set during the English Regency after taking a class about the Georgian era at Boston College. In 1986, she participated in Miss America with the Miss Massachusetts sash. After that, she focused on her studies and graduated with a degree in political science from Wellesley College three months after selling her first novel to a publisher.
In October 1998, Kleypas’s home in Texas was flooded, and her family lost everything except the clothes they were wearing. Her colleagues gave her clothes and books. After the flood, she and her mother (whose home also flooded) went shopping for necessities. Each of them also chose a romance novel, which they said helped them cope with the stress they were feeling. This experience made Kleypas feel that writing romance novels was the right choice for her instead of writing more literary works.
Kleypas is best known for writing historical romance novels. In early 2006, she announced she would temporarily move away from writing historical romances to try writing contemporary romance novels. Her first contemporary novel, Sugar Daddy, became a bestseller on the New York Times list.
In 2026, Kleypas announced a new novel, Queen of Lombard Street, to be released on October 20, 2026. This would be her first new novel since Devil in Disguise, published in 2021.
Kleypas currently lives in California with her husband, Gregory Ellis, an entrepreneur, and their two children.
Style
Kleypas was inspired by books like Wuthering Heights and works by E. M. Forster, as well as writers from her time, such as Laura Kinsale, Loretta Chase, and Kathleen Woodiwiss. Her early books followed common features of romance novels from the 1970s and 1980s, where the main female character often faced danger and needed help from the male hero. Later, Kleypas focused on stories where female characters had control over their lives and pursued their own goals. In the Ravenels series, she created female leads who sought happiness and success outside of marriage. Kleypas’s experience in beauty pageants influenced her writing, leading her to avoid creating heroines who were physically perfect or overly confident. For her male characters, she prefers men who are strong, well-spoken, and self-made. These men eventually love the heroine deeply, showing their feelings clearly. Kleypas often includes characters who feel out of place, such as heroes from non-wealthy backgrounds or heroines who don’t fit into traditional roles. She believes that in romance stories, the two lovers should support each other’s goals and that the heroine should grow as a person through her relationship with the hero. In her novel Dreaming of You, the female lead learns about a new world through her connection with the hero and changes into a different, better version of herself. Kleypas also shows the hero changing, becoming more open to emotions and traits often associated with women.
In her first novel, the female lead was forced into a romantic situation by the male lead, a scene Kleypas later regretted. She changed her writing to ensure that male characters always asked for the heroine’s consent before romantic moments. Kleypas explained that early in her career, she had absorbed some outdated and unfair ideas about relationships and attractiveness. Over time, she realized that true romance involves two strong, intelligent people who challenge and learn from each other. Her rules for writing historical romance include never showing physical or verbal abuse between characters. She believes that once respect is lost, a relationship cannot be repaired. Some audiobooks of her work have been updated to make scenes more respectful and consensual.
Kleypas writes her modern stories using a first-person point of view, meaning the story is told from the perspective of the main character.
Awards
In 2002, the author received the RITA Award for best Romantic Novella for the book I Will in Wish List. In 2004, the author received the RITA Award for best Short Historical for the book Worth Any Price.
Adaptations
In 2012, her book Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor was made into a Hallmark TV movie called Christmas with Holly. In 2015, the Wallflowers series was adapted into a two-volume manga.