She is a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellow and the first American writer of young adult literature to speak at the European Parliament[1] and NATO.

[3] In 2002, Sepetys was featured in Rolling Stone magazine's "Women in Rock" special issue as a woman driven to make a difference.

[6] Her first novel, Between Shades of Gray, about a teenage girl deported from her native Lithuania to Siberian Gulag labor camps after the Soviet occupation in 1941, was critically acclaimed[7] and translated into over 30 languages.

It was released on February 12, 2013[13] and features Josie Moraine, a young woman in the 1950s French Quarter of New Orleans who struggles to escape her family and become the author of her own destiny.

[14] Salt to the Sea was published on February 2, 2016, and chronicles the 1945 refugee evacuation from East Prussia and the MV Wilhelm Gustloff disaster.

"[16] The New York Times added this in their review of Salt to the Sea—"Ruta Sepetys acts as champion of the interstitial people so often ignored—whole populations lost in the cracks of history.

[21] As communist regimes are crumbling across Europe in 1989, I Must Betray You, published in 2022, describes seventeen year old Cristian Florescu's world in the isolation of Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romania.

[22] Between Shades of Gray has been released in an unabridged audiobook by Penguin Audio, narrated by Emily Klein; and has been translated into 30 languages and sold in as many countries.

Salt to the Sea has been released in an unabridged audiobook by Listening Library and is narrated by Jorjeana Marie, Will Damron, Cassandra Morris, and Michael Crouch.

The Screenplay was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber whose credits include "500 Days of Summer," “The Fault in Our Stars," “Our Souls at Night," and "The Disaster Artist".

She also won the Shadower's Award on June 21, 2023 for "I Must Betray You "[18] Sepetys has been recognized multiple times by the Children's Book Committee of Bank Street College of Education.

[28] Between Shades of Gray received an Outstanding Merit recognition as a 2012 Best Children's Book of the Year; the graphic novel version was on the 2022 list.