Nic Stone was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. She went to Spellman College, a historically black liberal arts college for women located in Atlanta, where she majored in philosophy. After graduating, she worked extensively in teen mentoring. She lived for several years in Israel and came back to the United States to write full-time.
Stone has published Young Adult and middle-grade fiction. Her first novel, Dear Martin, was published in 2017 by Crown Books for Young Readers. She has stated that she started writing the novel following the death of Jordan Davis, a 17-year old Black high school student who was fatally shot by a white man over a dispute about loud music in 2017. Its sequel Dear Justyce, was published in October 2020. In Dear Justyce, Quan Banks reflects on his past and writes letters to Justyce, the protagonist of Dear Martin.
Stone's other novels include Odd One Out (2018), which centers on three queer teenagers in a love triangle, and Jackpot (2019), which follows a gas-station clerk that sells a winning lottery ticket. She also published Clean Getaway in January 2020, which is about 11-year-old Scoob, who goes on a road trip with her grandmother. Most recently, she published Shuri: A Black Panther Novel, a novel that focuses on Shuri from the Black Panther franchise, with Scholastic in 2020.
Stone's novels focus on contemporary social issues from a wide array of perspectives. On her official website, she explains that the ideas from her novels come from everywhere. She often writes in order to work through problems or to delve into certain experiences: "I like using Story to explore problems I don't know how to solve or to process experiences, some of which I've lived and some I haven't."
Dear Martin debuted at #4 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list again, in February 2020, after Dear Martin was published as a paperback. The novel was also a William C. Morris award finalist and an ALAN / Amelia Elizabeth Walden award finalist. Her middle-grade novel, Clean Getaway, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. It appeared on the Children's Middle-Grade New York Times Bestseller List.
Dear Martin, published in 2017, is a novel about 17-year-old Justyce, who, after being racially profiled by a police officer, grapples with questions of police brutality and systemic racism. As he finishes his senior year, Justyce reflects on his...
