Chris Colfer

Chris Colfer is an American actor, singer, and author who first gained wide recognition playing Kurt Hummel on the television series Glee before establishing a parallel career as a bestselling children's author. He is best known for The Land of Stories series, beginning with The Wishing Spell in 2012, which follows twin siblings who fall into a fairy-tale world populated by reimagined classic characters — Cinderella, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and others — living on well past their traditional storybook endings. The six-book main series, along with companion volumes, became a major bestseller and helped establish Colfer as a genuine second career in children's publishing rather than a celebrity vanity project.

Colfer has continued writing for younger readers with the Land of Stories spin-off series A Tale of Magic and other companion titles, generally blending fairy-tale pastiche, comic adventure, and gentle themes about creativity, identity, and family. New readers should start with The Wishing Spell, since the twins' adventures and the wider Land of Stories world build continuously across the series. Colfer has continued to work in both acting and writing, and the Land of Stories books remain a fixture of middle-grade fantasy shelves; no film or television adaptation of the book series itself has been produced to date, separate from his prior acting career on Glee.