Bestselling author Jodi Picoult has debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list four times. The 44-year-old New Hampshire resident boasts 18 novels to her name, including Songs of the Humpback Whale (1992), Harvesting the Heart (1994), Picture Perfect (1995), The Pact (1998), Plain Truth (2000), Salem Falls (2001), Perfect Match (2002), My Sister’s Keeper (2004), Vanishing Acts (2005), The Tenth Circle (2006), Change of Heart (2008), House Rules (2010), and her newest novel, Sing You Home (2011).
Picoult’s books are translated into 34 languages in 35 countries. Three of her books — The Pact, Plain Truth, and The Tenth Circle — were made into television movies, and New Line Cinema brought My Sister’s Keeper to the big screen (with Nick Cassavetes directing and Cameron Diaz starring).
Picoult studied creative writing with her mentor and teacher Mary Morris while at Princeton. She achieved early success after publishing two short stories in Seventeen magazine while still in school. Realism, and a profound desire to pay the rent, led Picoult to a series of jobs following her graduation: technical writer for a Wall Street brokerage firm, copywriter at an ad agency, editor at a textbook publisher, and eighth grade English teacher. She would eventually attend Harvard to pursue a master’s degree in education.
Picoult studied creative writing with her mentor and teacher Mary Morris while at Princeton. She achieved early success after publishing two short stories in Seventeen magazine while still in school.
While at Princeton, Picoult met her future husband, Tim Van Leer. It was while she was pregnant with her first child that she wrote her first novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale.
In 2003, she was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction. She has also been the recipient an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association, sponsored by the Margaret Alexander Edwards Trust and Booklist, one of 10 books written for adults that have special appeal for young adults; the Book Browse Diamond Award for novel of the year; a lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the Romance Writers of America; Cosmopolitan magazine’s ‘Fearless Fiction’ Award 2007; Waterstone’s Author of the Year in the UK; a Vermont Green Mountain Book Award; a Virginia Reader’s Choice Award; the Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award; and a Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award.
Picoult wrote five issues of the Wonder Woman comic book series for DC Comics, and in 2010, she received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Dartmouth College.
Along with her husband and three children, Picoult lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, with two Springer spaniels, two donkeys, two geese, one duck, eight chickens, and the occasional Holstein.