Lisi Harrison was born and raised by her parents Ken Gottlieb and Shaila Gottlieb in Toronto along with her brother and sister. Harrison makes reference to her parents by dedicating her first "Clique" book to them, and she references her siblings in A Tale Of Two Pretties. Harrison attended a Hebrew school up until she was in ninth grade, then she attended a public high school, Forest Hill Collegiate. After graduating high school, she moved to Montreal, Quebec at age 18 to attend McGill University. She was studying for a film major but left the school two years later realizing writing was her true passion. She transferred to Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts to continue her writing. She graduated Emerson with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative writing. In 2007, Harrison left New York and settled down in California with her family. She currently resides in Laguna Beach, California.
Career
Before becoming a best-selling author, Harrison moved away from Boston and worked for 12 years at MTV in New York City. Over time she became the Senior Director of Development where she was able to create and develop new shows for the network. The author said, "I learned what appeals to teens. I learned how to hold someone’s attention. I learned that everyone wants to fit in and be accepted, no matter how old they are," of her experience while working at MTV. Her experience at the network was the inspiration for her bestselling series The Clique, because it reminded her of middle school life. She started writing the first two novels in the series while working at MTV so that she would still have a job if her writing career didn't work out. After selling over 9 million copies in her "Clique" series, Harrison quit her MTV job in June 2004 and focused on her writing career. She has written three separate young adult book series: The Clique, Alphas, Monster High and "Pretenders". The Clique series has 21 books in total, including a prequel, a summer collection and a dictionary-style book called The Cliquetionary. The Summer Collection is a collection of five individual books entitled with each character's names, which are about each girl's summer vacation. Alphas is a smaller book series containing only four books, and the Monster High series also contains four books. Harrison 's first adult series, The Dirty Book Club, was released out October 10, 2017.
