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A Novel
by Jodi Picoult
Book Reviewed by:This article relates to Nineteen Minutes
Jodi Picoult is the bestselling
author of fourteen books to date. She
was born and raised on Long Island
before studying creative writing at
Princeton. While still a student she had
two short stories published in Seventeen
magazine. On being told that someone was
going to pay her for something she'd
written she immediately called her
mother who responded. "That's great,
who's going to support you?"
Realism - and a profound desire to be
able to pay the rent - led Picoult to a
series of different jobs following her
graduation: 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 Tim 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 (1992).
Her struggle to balance motherhood and
her own career formed, in part, the
basis for her second novel,
Harvesting The Heart. "It took me a
while to find the balance," Picoult
says, "but I'm a better mother because I
have my writing… and I'm a better writer
because of the experiences I've had as a
parent that continually remind me how
far we are willing to go for the people
we love the most."
She lives with Tim and their three
children in Hanover, New Hampshire with
a dog, a rabbit, two Jersey calves, and
the occasional Holstein.
More about Jodi Picoult and info on some
of her books at
BookBrowse.
Publishing in March 2008:
Change of Heart.
Interesting Links:
Filed under Books and Authors
This "beyond the book article" relates to Nineteen Minutes. It originally ran in February 2007 and has been updated for the
February 2008 paperback edition.
Go to magazine.
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