Nicholas Charles Sparks (born 31 December 1965 in Omaha, Nebraska) is an American novelist and screenwriter, best known for romantic dramas set largely in coastal North Carolina. His family moved to north-central California when he was eight. He attended the University of Notre Dame on a track and field scholarship and graduated in 1988 with a degree in business finance. His first published novel, The Notebook, appeared in 1996. He has since written more than twenty novels, among them Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999) — whose heroine was inspired by his sister Danielle — Dear John (2006), The Last Song (2009), Safe Haven (2010), The Wish (2021) and Counting Miracles (2024). With his brother Micah he wrote the 2004 memoir Three Weeks with My Brother, and he co-wrote the 2025 novel Remain with the filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. His books have been translated into more than fifty languages and have sold well over a hundred million copies worldwide, and eleven have been adapted as feature films. He founded the Nicholas Sparks Foundation in 2011 and lives in North Carolina.
