Meet the author

Erin Russell.

Writer · United States

Erin Russell: co-author of Dork Diaries alongside her mother Rachel Renée Russell — the doodled middle-school diary series that's a near-universal 9–12 staple, funny, warm and firmly on the side of the imperfect kid.

Erin Russell is an American writer and co-author of the Dork Diaries series, which she creates with her mother, Rachel Renée Russell. The books are narrated as the doodle-packed diary of self-declared dork Nikki Maxwell as she navigates the crushes, mean-girl politics and friendship wobbles of Westchester Country Day middle school. Working as a family team, the Russells thread warm friendship, honesty and self-acceptance through the slapstick, keeping Nikki's voice funny, exclamation-heavy and reliably reassuring across sixteen main-series titles. Though the series carries her mother's name on the covers, Erin is a long-standing creative partner on one of the great girl-led reluctant-reader pipelines — a near-universal staple for 9–12s who love the diary-and-cartoon format of Diary of a Wimpy Kid.