Jodi Lynn Picoult (pron.: /ˈdʒoʊdi piːˈkoʊ/) (born May 19, 1966 in Nesconset, Long Island) is an American author. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003.
Picoult currently has some 14 million copies of her books in print worldwide.
She is the bestselling author of eighteen novels: Songs of the Humpback Whale (1992), Harvesting the Heart (1994), Picture Perfect (1995), Mercy (1996), The Pact (1998), Keeping Faith (1999), Plain Truth (2000), Salem Falls (2001), Perfect Match (2002), Second Glance (2003), My Sister's Keeper (2004), Vanishing Acts (2005), The Tenth Circle (2006) Nineteen Minutes (2007), Change of Heart (2008), Handle With Care (2009), House Rules (2010), and Sing You Home (2011) — the last five of which debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list – and her newest novel, Lone Wolf.
Her family moved to New Hampshire when she was 13 years old. She has described her family as "non-practicing Jewish". Picoult wrote her first story at age 5, entitled "The Lobster Which Misunderstood".
Picoult studied creative writing with
Mary Morris at
Princeton, and had two short stories published in Seventeen magazine while still a student.
Realism - and a profound desire to be able to pay the rent - led Picoult to a series of different jobs following her graduation in 1987: as a technical writer for a Wall Street brokerage firm, as a copywriter at an ad agency, as an editor at a textbook publisher, and as an 8th grade English teacher - before entering Harvard to pursue a master’s in education.
She married
Timothy Van Leer, whom she had known at Princeton, and it was while she was pregnant with her first child that she wrote her first novel,
Songs of the Humpback Whale.
Jodi 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 ten 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 became the writer of DC Comics' Wonder Woman (vol. 3) series following the departure of fellow writer Allan Heinberg. Her first issue (#6) was released on March 28, 2007, and her last was issue #10 (released on June 27, 2007).
Nineteen Minutes, Picoult's novel about the aftermath of a school shooting in a small town, has become her first book to debut at #1 on the
New York Times Best Seller list. Her book
Change Of Heart was published on March 4, 2008, and became Picoult's second novel to debut at #1 on the
NYT Best Seller list.
She received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Dartmouth College in 2010 and another from the University of New Haven in 2012. Jodi, Tim, and their three children (Sammy, Kyle, and Jake) currently live in Hanover, New Hampshire with two Springer spaniels, a rescue puppy, two donkeys, two geese, one duck, eight chickens, and the occasional Holstein.
