[6][7] As a child, Yanagihara moved frequently with her family, living in Hawaii, New York, Maryland, California and Texas.

[10] Yanagihara has said that her father introduced her as a girl to the work of Philip Roth and to "British writers of a certain age", such as Anita Brookner, Iris Murdoch, and Barbara Pym.

[19] Yanagihara described writing the book at its best as "glorious as surfing; it felt like being carried aloft on something I couldn't conjure but was lucky enough to have caught, if for just a moment.

It felt, oddly, like being one of those people who adopt a tiger or lion when the cat's a baby and cuddly and manageable, and then watch in dismay and awe when it turns on them as an adult".

[11] In 2017, she became the editor-in-chief of T.[4] Yanagihara's third novel, To Paradise, was published on January 11, 2022, and reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.