Shea Ernshaw author page

Shea Ernshaw biography

Shea Ernshaw is an American author of young adult and adult fiction. Her books have been published in more than twenty countries and have appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. Her fiction frequently combines mystery, folklore, supernatural elements and atmospheric settings.

Her debut novel, The Wicked Deep, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2018. Set in the fictional coastal town of Sparrow, Oregon, it follows seventeen-year-old Penny Talbot as the town confronts a recurring curse connected with three sisters who were drowned for witchcraft two centuries earlier. The novel won the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature at the 2019 Oregon Book Awards.

Ernshaw followed it with the young adult novel Winterwood in 2019. Her later YA books include Long Live the Pumpkin Queen, A Wilderness of Stars and The Beautiful Maddening. Published by Disney Books in 2022, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen continues the story of Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas from Sally’s perspective and became a number-one New York Times bestseller.

Ernshaw has also written fiction for adults. A History of Wild Places follows a man with an unusual ability who is hired to find a missing author and discovers an isolated community called Pastoral. Her adult novel Habits of the Sea, published by Simon & Schuster on 7 July 2026, centres on a mysterious floating island and a man who appears not to age.