Joyce Maynard

The author of eight books, including the novel “To Die For,” which was adapted into a screenplay and became a box-office hit starring Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon and Joaquin Phoenix. She is also the author of the bestselling memoir, “At Home in the World,” in which she broke her silence about her years-long affair with reclusive author J.D. Salinger; it has been translated into 11 languages.

Her novel, “The Usual Rules” -- a story about surviving loss -- has been a favorite of book club audiences of all ages and was chosen as one of the 10 best books for young readers for 2003. Her latest work, “Labor Day,” will be published by William Morrow in August 2009.

Maynard first came to national attention with the publication of her New York Times cover story, “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life,” in 1973, when she was a freshman at Yale. Since then she has been a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, a contributor to the CBS program “Spectrum,” a syndicated newspaper columnist whose “Domestic Affairs” column appeared in more than 50 papers nationwide, and a regular contributor to National Public Radio and national magazines, including Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, Salon, San Francisco Magazine and many more.

Her essays have been widely published in collections and featured in The New York Times. She is a contributing writer at MORE magazine.

A native of New Hampshire, Maynard now makes her home in Mill Valley, Calif., and at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, where she runs the Lake Atitlan Writing Workshop, which she founded in 2002.