Sparks, Nicholas (1965-…), is an American novelist who has become an internationally popular author of love stories. Sparks is one of the few male writers to succeed in a literary field generally dominated by female authors.
Sparks’s novels are typically set in North Carolina. But his story endings vary among bittersweet, happy, and tragic. He writes in both the first and third person, sometimes combining both styles. He also varies the historical setting, the book’s length, and the ages of the characters.
Sparks became a best-selling author with his first published novel, The Notebook (1996). The plot describes the romance between Allie and Noah, characters modeled after his wife’s maternal grandparents. The narrative is framed by beginning and ending chapters in the late 1900’s, with most of the story taking place in 1932 and in 1946 in rural North Carolina. Sparks has since averaged a novel a year, each a best seller. His novels include Message in a Bottle (1998), Nights in Rodanthe (2002), The Last Song (2009), The Best of Me (2011), Two by Two (2016), Every Breath (2018), The Wish (2021), and Dreamland (2022). A number of Sparks’s novels, including The Notebook, have been adapted into motion pictures. He also co-wrote Three Weeks with My Brother (2004), a travel memoir, with his brother, Micah.
Sparks was born on Dec. 31, 1965, in Omaha, Nebraska. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1988 from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. Sparks worked as a real estate appraiser, a waiter, and a pharmaceutical company representative, among other jobs. He became a full-time writer after the success of The Notebook.
In 2006, Sparks co-founded the Epiphany School, a college preparatory school, in New Bern, North Carolina. He is also a major contributor to the Creative Writing Program at Notre Dame.
