Who is Jessica Knoll? The author behind Netflix’s latest movie Luckiest Girl Alive

Trigger warning: Discussion of rape

Luckiest Girl Alive is Netflix’s latest movie drama based on the novel of the same name by American author Jessica Knoll. Parts of the Netflix drama and the book are lifted from the author’s real life experiences as a teenager growing up. Jessica Knoll spent years coming to terms with what happened to her after she was gang raped by three boys when she was 15 years old.

Knoll eventually went onto write Luckiest Girl Alive and tell her story through Ani, who experienced the very same thing. Opening up in an article for Lenny Letter, Knoll said: “The first person to tell me I was gang raped was a therapist, seven years after the fact. the second was my literary agent, five years later, only she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about Ani, the protagonist of my novel, which is a work of fiction. What I’ve kept to myself, up until today, is that its inspiration is not.”

Alongside Luckiest Girl Alive, Jessica Knoll has published a string of other books and is a New York Times best-selling writer. Here is everything you need to know about Jessica Knoll, the author of Luckiest Girl Alive:

Jessica is a 39-year-old author from Philadelphia

Jessica Knoll grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and attended Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband Greg Cortese. Greg and Jessica have been married for 10 years and during the early days of their relationship, Jessica told Greg about her past and said it resulted in “a whole new level of trust for them that made them feel safer.”

She has two other books published alongside Luckiest Girl Alive

Luckiest Girl Alive was Jessica’s first novel which was published in 2015. A year later she published a psychological fiction novel called American Girl and in 2018, her third book The Favorite Sister was published.

The Luckiest Girl Alive author used to work at Cosmopolitan

Before rising to fame with her book Luckiest Girl Alive, Jessica worked as a senior editor at Cosmopolitan and was an articles editor at Self. Before her editorial roles, she started her journalist career as an intern for New York City magazine.

Jessica has an estimated net worth of five million dollars

Jessica Knoll has an estimate net worth of roughly $5 million which is roughly £4.5 million. Speaking with The Cut, Jessica said after Luckiest Girl Alive proved successful she bought a Porsche, a home in L.A. and $320 a session therapy “to address serious trauma in my life”.

Luckiest Girl Alive is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

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• Ani’s rape storyline really happened to the author of Luckiest Girl Alive

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• All the major differences between the Luckiest Girl Alive book and the Netflix movie