Background and career
Cecily Brooke von Ziegesar ( VON zig-AY-zər; born June 27, 1970) is an American author best known for the young adult novel series Gossip Girl.
Cecily von Ziegesar was born in New York City into the Ziegesar family, which belonged to an ancient German nobility from the Margraviate of Brandenburg. She is the daughter of Franz Albrecht von Ziegesar, the CEO and Chairman of Bowne & Co., and his second wife, Olivia James. She is the half-sister of writer Peter von Ziegesar. Her childhood dream was to grow up to be a ballerina; she began lessons at age three and auditioned for the School of American Ballet at age eight, but was rejected. As a teenager, she commuted from Connecticut to Manhattan at 6:00 a.m. every day to attend The Nightingale-Bamford School. After graduating from Nightingale, von Ziegesar attended Colby College. Then she spent a year in Budapest working for a local radio station. She then returned to the United States to study creative writing at the University of Arizona, leaving school shortly thereafter.
In New York City, while working at book-packaging firm Alloy Entertainment, she became inspired to create the Gossip Girl series, which presents a view of high-end teenage lifestyles. The series climbed to the top of The New York Times Best-Sellers list in 2002. A spin-off book series, The It Girl, made the list in 2005. The Constance Billard [sic] School for Girls is based on an exaggerated version of Ziegesar's own alma mater, Nightingale. In October 2011, Ziegesar released a spin-off of her first novel: Psycho Killer. In February 2026, it was announced that a standalone novel titled Blair will be published in the summer of 2027. The novel will pick up 20 years after the original series.
Gossip Girl was adapted for television by The CW in 2007. Though fans of the book series criticized it for veering away from the book in plot and character personalities, Ziegesar stated that the major plot outline remained true to her vision, and that she was pleased that "at least it takes place in New York City". On May 16, 2011, Ziegesar herself made a cameo appearance in the fourth season finale.
In December 2009, Yen Press announced that it was working with South Korean artist Baek Hye-Kyung to create a graphic novel adaptation of the series titled Gossip Girl: For Your Eyes Only. Rather than adapting the original novels, however, the graphic novels will feature original stories with the same characters. It will be serialized in the company's anthology magazine Yen Plus, with the first chapter appearing in the January 2010 issue.
Von Ziegesar resides in the Columbia Street Waterfront District, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, with her husband Richard Griggs, who is Chief Operating Officer of the Judd Foundation, and their children Agnes Belle von Ziegesar Griggs and Oscar von Ziegesar Griggs.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
