Laura van den Berg was born and raised in Florida. She is the author of six works of fiction, including The Third Hotel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), a finalist for the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award; I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), which was one of Time Magazine's 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020; and, most recently, State of Paradise (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024).

She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has twice been shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Her next novel, Ring of Night, is forthcoming from FSG.

She is a Senior Lecturer on Fiction at Harvard University and is based in the Hudson Valley, with her husband, the writer Paul Yoon, and their dog, Oscar. Laura boxes competitively in the amateurs and can usually be found at the gym, training for her next fight. She writes a newsletter about boxing and writing called FIGHT WEEK.