Sabaa Tahir is an American young adult novelist best known for her New York Times-bestselling book An Ember in the Ashes, its follow-up books, and the novel All My Rage.

Two of her books, An Ember in the Ashes and A Torch Against the Night, were named among Time Magazine's list of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time in 2020. In 2022, her book All My Rage received the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and the Michael L. Printz Award. In 2025, her book Heir was nominated for the first New Adult Book Prize, won the Ignyte Award for Outstanding Novel – Young Adult, and received the Libby Award for Young Adult Book of the Year.

Tahir has also written non-fiction reviews and essays for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vox.

Life

Tahir grew up in the Mojave Desert in Ridgecrest, California, with her parents and two older brothers. Her parents moved from Pakistan to the United Kingdom. Later, they moved their family to the United States. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). While she was a student there, she worked as an intern at The Washington Post. After she graduated, she started a job there as a copy editor. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.