SATA

PERSONAL

Born 1993, in CO.

Graduated from Zürich University of the Arts.

ADDRESS

• Home - Zürich, Switzerland.
• Agent - Sara Megibow, KT Literary, 9249 S. Broadway, Ste. 200-543, Highlands Ranch, CO 80129.

CAREER

Musician, writer, and teacher. Co-founder, Foundations in Literacy, Zürich, Switzerland; teacher, Junges Literaturlabor, Zürich, Switzerland.

Movies, reading, travel, weird music, art.

Autillus—Swiss association of children’s authors and illustrators (co-president); Leopold Bachmann Foundation (board member).

Aarhus39, International Children’s Literature Hay Festival, 2017, named one of the best writers under the age of 40 in Europe.

WRITINGS

• NOVELS
• The Peculiar, Greenwillow Books (New York, NY), 2012
• The Whatnot (sequel to The Peculiar ), Greenwillow Books (New York, NY), 2013
• A Drop of Night, Greenwillow Books (New York, NY), 2016
• Cinders and Sparrows, Greenwillow Books (New York, NY), 2020
• Release the Wolves, Greenwillow Books (New York, NY), 2024
• ADULT NONFICTION
• The Secret Life of Hidden Places: Concealed Rooms, Clandestine Passageways, and the Curious Minds That made Them, cowritten by April Genevieve Tucholke, Workman Publishing (New York, NY), 2023

Contributor to numerous magazines and newspapers. Author of radio play In the Forest of the Dolls. Work represented in anthologies, including The Cabinet of Curiosities: 36 Tales Brief and Sinister, Greenwillow Books (New York, NY), 2014, Slasher Girls and Monster Boys, Dial Books (New York, NY), 2015, Quest: Stories of Journeys from Around Europe, Alma Books (London, England, United Kingdom), 2017, and The Dagon Collection, PS Publishing (East Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom), 2024.

The Peculiar and The Whatnot were adapted for audiobook, read by Peter Altschuler, HarperAudio, 2012 and 2013, respectively.

SIDELIGHTS

Born in the United States and now living in Switzerland, Stefan Bachmann is the author of a number of acclaimed fantasy novels, including The Peculiar and Cinders and Sparrows. His works have garnered praise for their extensive world-building, absorbing plotlines, and engaging characters.

Bachmann began writing his debut novel when he was a teenager. “The first spark came from me wanting to write a book with all of the things I liked in it—war and steampunk and Victorian stuff,” Bachmann recalled to Michael Levy in an interview in Publishers Weekly. “I couldn’t find the book in a bookstore so I thought I should try to write it myself.” The result was The Peculiar, which was published when Bachmann was nineteen years old and became a bestseller in Switzerland.

Bachmann’s The Peculiar is the story of two siblings of mixed human/fairy parentage—called Peculiars. It is set in a steampunk version of England where the fairies have just lost a war. When someone begins kidnapping Peculiar children, young Bartholomew joins forces with a human investigator to save his sister, Hettie.

Several critics praised the inventive setting, engaging plot, and prose style of The Peculiar. Hailing Bachmann’s “polished and witty writing,” a Publishers Weekly critic added that “when a teenager writes a publishable book, it’s noteworthy, but when the book is this good, it’s something special.” “The intricately detailed descriptions of sinister scenes create palpable evil that will raise readers’ hackles,” predicted a Kirkus Reviews critic, while in Horn Book, Tina Lindsay wrote that “Bachmann is skillful in setting tone and scene and has a great sense of rhythm and pace.” Replete with what School Library Journal contributor Beth L. Meister described as “wry humor and unusual characters,” The Peculiar serves up “an intriguing, thought-provoking whole that will leave readers looking forward to sequels.”

Bartholomew and Hettie’s story continues in The Whatnot, in which Hettie has opened the door between England and the faery Old Country, and Bartholomew enlists the help of a one-eyed orphan to rescue her. “Bachmann unleashes his boundless imagination in his descriptions of the Old Country, whose rules and landscape are capricious and ever-changing,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews critic. “Both plot and characters are brilliantly contrived and addictive,” according to Voice of Youth Advocates contributor Jan Chapman, and the author’s “prose is polished and assured.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that “Bachmann writes with a skill that belies his youth,” while Miriam Lang Budin wrote in School Library Journal that The Whatnot “is an enthralling read in its own right, but even better for those acquainted with the first book.”

Bachmann focuses on entertaining older readers in his first young-adult novel, A Drop of Night. Seventeen-year-old Anouk is excited to have won a free trip to France to help excavate an underground palace. As she soon learns, however, the contest was a scam intended to trap her and four other teens within the palace’s secret rooms. Their attempts to escape this deadly prison are interspersed with flashbacks that describe the palace’s construction in the late 1700s, including the secret passages young Aurelie and her aristocratic family would use to escape from discontented mobs during the French Revolution.

Reviewing A Drop of Night, School Library Journal contributor Maggie Mason Smith remarked that “smooth writing, an engaging plot, and only wisps of romance place this work’s focus squarely on two headstrong and rebellious girls.” “Bachmann’s writing is as polished as in his earlier books,” asserted a Publishers Weekly reviewer, and a Kirkus Reviews critic wrote that “the peculiar circumstances add to the strange atmosphere and also to the suspense, lending the book an appealing, unworldly quality.” While finding some aspects of A Drop of Night contrived, Alaine Martaus concluded in the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books that “Readers looking for a scare for scare’s sake will revel in the grotesqueness and cheer when Anouk and company take down their captors for a satisfying end.”

In Cinders and Sparrows, Bachmann offers “a suspenseful romp through an entertainingly witchy world,” according to a writer in Kirkus Reviews. The novel introduces Zita Brydgeborn, an orphaned twelve year old who works as a housemaid for an elderly widow. Zita’s life changes dramatically and unexpectedly one day when she receives a mysterious letter identifying her as the long-lost heir to the Brydgeborn family fortune. Arriving at Blackbird Castle, her ancestral home, Zita learns that she is descended from a line of powerful sorceresses, and she begins studying the art of witchcraft under the tutelage of her stern and distrustful guardian, Mrs. Cantanker. As Zita’s powers grow, she uncovers a secret from her family’s past that places her life in danger.

Cinders and Sparrows earned a strong critical reception. “The castle is rich with enough ghosts and enchanted staircases to satisfy any fantasy lover,” the Kirkus Reviews contributor observed. “Bachmann balances horror, magic, and a coming of age story with aplomb, allowing each room to develop within this novel,” April Spisak noted in the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, and a Publishers Weekly critic cited the work’s “absorbing atmosphere of escalating tension and paranoia, and moments of delightful magic all make for a memorable adventure.”

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After cowriting the adult nonfiction book The Secret Life of Hidden Places: Concealed Rooms, Clandestine Passageways, and the Curious Minds That Made Them with April Genevieve Tucholke, Bachmann returned to middle-grade fantasy fiction with Release the Wolves. The story features Argo, a young blacksmith apprentice, and Ana, the king’s daughter. The two are hoping to avenge the deaths of people close to them and overthrow the Elduari, the conquerors of their country who use vicious monsters to cow the populace. Argo and Ana are not alone, but too many of their people are afraid to stand up for themselves, so the two protagonists do their best to rouse the masses and defeat their overlords. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the story “ambitious” and wrote that Bachmann has a “knack for creating gut-wrenching horrors.”

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BIOCRIT

PERIODICALS

• Booklist, September 15, 2012, Charli Osborne, review of The Peculiar, p. 72.

• Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, September, 2014, Karen Coats, review of The Cabinet of Curiosities: 36 Tales Brief and Sinister, p. 6; February, 2016, Alaine Martaus, review of A Drop of Night, p. 295; October, 2020, April Spisak, review of Cinders and Sparrows, pp. 71-72.

• Horn Book, November-December, 2012, Nina Lindsay, review of The Peculiar, p. 79; September-October, 2014, Anita L. Burkam, review of The Cabinet of Curiosities, p. 103; January-February, 2021, Anita L. Burkam, review of Cinders and Sparrows, p. 98.

• Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2012, review of The Peculiar; September 15, 2013, review of The Whatnot; January 1, 2016, review of A Drop of Night; September 1, 2020, review of Cinders and Sparrows; July 1, 2024, review of Release the Wolves.

• Publishers Weekly, July 9, 2012, review of The Peculiar, p. 64; December 24, 2012, Michael Levy, “Flying Starts: Stefan Bachmann,” p. 19; September 9, 2013, review of The Whatnot, p. 57; December 14, 2015, review of A Drop of Night, p. 86; August 24, 2020, review of Cinders and Sparrows, p. 78.

• School Library Journal, October, 2012, Beth L. Meister, review of The Peculiar, p. 123; October, 2013, Miriam Lang Budin, review of The Whatnot, p. 96; July, 2014, Elisabeth Gattullo Marrocolla, review of The Cabinet of Curiosities, p. 80; January, 2016, Maggie Mason Smith, review of A Drop of Night, p. 103.

• Voice of Youth Advocates, February, 2014, Jan Chapman, review of The Whatnot, p. 68.

ONLINE

• Stefan Bachmann website, http://stefanbachmann.com (January 2, 2025).