Jodi Picoult

Picoult is the oldest of two children. When she was 13, her parents moved the family from Long Island to New Hampshire. Both Picoult's mother and grandmother were teachers, and she credits them with influencing her to become a writer. She received a degree in creative writing from Princeton in 1987 and later earned a master's degree in education from Harvard. In between her degrees she held a number of jobs, including teaching English at the middle school level. Her first novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale, was published in 1992, and she's published nearly one per year since then. Her 2007 novel Nineteen Minutes, which follows the events of a fictional school shooting, was her first novel to make the New York Times Bestseller list. Throughout her career, Picoult has worked with a number of organizations and causes that work to empower and educate young people, as well as literary organizations like Vida: Women in Literary Arts that seek to raise the visibility of marginalized voices in the literary world. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.