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Cecily von Ziegesar

Cecily von Ziegesar is an American author of young adult novels. She is mainly popular for creating the Gossip Girl franchise. She born on 27th of June 1970. 

Von Ziegesar was born to a wealthy family, living in Connecticut where her parents marriage was falling apart, but "growing up" in Manhattan. She attended and graduated from The Nightingale-Bamford School, a prestigious all-girls private school on the Upper East Side. Attending this elite institution made Von Ziegesar wake up at 6 AM to commute by train to Grand Central, and get to school.

After graduating from Nightingale, Von Ziegesar attended Colby College. Then she spent a year in Budapest working for a local radio station. She soon returned to the United States to study creative writing at the University of Arizona.

In New York City, she found a job with book-packaging firm Alloy Entertainment, where she became inspired to create the Gossip Girl series.

The Gossip Girl books present a view of high-end teenage lifestyles. The series climbed to the top of the New York Times Best-Sellers list in 2002. The spin-off, The It Girl, made the list in 2005.

The Constance Billard School for Girls, the Gossip Girl characters' elite single-sex school, is based upon Von Ziegesar's all-girls private prep school, Nightingale-Bamford. As well, events from the book are based on her extremely wealthy friends who had "those parents" and "those lives", as well as Von Ziegesar's own life as being a gossip.

Gossip Girl was adapted for television in 2007. The show premiered to mixed reviews and lost more than a million viewers from episode one to two, from 3.65 million to 2.55 million. The rest of the season's viewers went up and down, the highest being 3 million viewers for the final episode of the season and the lowest being 1.80 million viewers for episode eleven.

Controversy surrounding the show was the fact that it failed to show much of the book's plots, character personalities, and other major and minor facts. However, von Ziegesar stated to ABC News that her most major plot lines were there and "at least it takes place in New York".

She met and started dating a "dashing Englishman" named Richard, currently a manager at a public art fund, while on a vacation to New York City from Arizona, and after a few months, she was living with him in North London. They married a year later. Since 1998, the couple has lived in New York metropolitan area.

Von Ziegesar has a daughter named Agnes, and when asked if she was going to hide her daughter from the prep school girl life, Von Ziegesar replied " I would send her to Nightingale, I feel I got a great education there."

von Ziegesar also has a son, named Oscar. Von Ziegesar, her husband, and two children reside in Brooklyn and have a nearly hairless cat named Pony Boy. von Ziegesar and her family formerly resided in Irvington, New York.

Books

Gossip Girl

Main article: Gossip Girl

The It Girl

Main article: The It Girl

Gossip Girl: The Carlyles

Main article: Gossip Girl: The Carlyles