Picoult, Jodi

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Picoult, Jodi

Career
Sidelights
Selected Writings
Sources

Author

B orn Jodi Lynn Picoult, May 19, 1966, in Long Island, New York; daughter of Myron (a securities analyst) and Jane (a preschool teacher) Picoult; married Timothy Warren Van Leer (an antiques dealer), November 18, 1989; children: Kyle, Jake, Samantha. Education: Princeton University, bachelor’s degree in creative writing/English, 1987; Harvard University, master’s degree in education, 1990.

Addresses: Contact—Atria Books, 11th Flr., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Home—Hanover, New Hampshire. Web site—http://www.jodipicoult.com

Career

B egan career on Wall Street writing bond portfolios, 1987; wrote copy for an ad agency and taught eighth-grade English, late 1980s; published first novel, 1992; became full-time writer, 1992.

Awards: New England Bookseller Award for Fiction, 2003; best fiction books of the year list, Washington Post, 2004; Margaret Alexander Edwards Award, American Library Association, for My Sister’s Keeper, 2004; Alex Award, Young Adult Library Services Association, for My Sister’s Keeper, 2005; Bookbrowse Diamond Award for novel of the year, for My Sister’s Keeper, 2005; Vermont Green Mountain Book Award, for My Sister’s Keeper, 2005; Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award, Illinois School Library Media Association, for My Sister’s Keeper, 2006; “Fearless Fiction” Award, Cosmopolitan, 2007.

Sidelights

S ince 1992, Jodi Picoult has been churning out bestselling novels at a rate of nearly one per year. While each novel is unique, most include the same ingredients—a clever plot, a juicy topic, and a heart-rending family dilemma that forces her characters into a moral quagmire. Picoult takes on hot-button issues, writing about school killings, child molestation, date rape, euthanasia, infidelity, and teen suicide. Over the years, she has developed an ever-widening fan base that includes multiple generations of both male and female readers. In 2007, Picoult’s 14th novel, Nineteen Minutes, debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Along the way, Picoult caught the eye of DC Comics, which hired her to write some plotlines for its Wonder Woman series. The first of her five-series super-hero epic hit bookstores in 2007.

Jodi Lynn Picoult was born on May 19, 1966, on Long Island, New York, to Myron and Jane Picoult. Her father worked as a securities analyst, while her mother taught preschool. Picoult grew up in the Long Island hamlet of Nesconset in an upmarket housing development where streets bore names like Prince Charming Lane. Picoult once told the New Hampshire Sunday News that her childhood was so idyllic she had no business becoming a writer.

Picoult composed her first tale at the age of five, a short story titled “The Lobster Which Misunderstood.” In fourth grade, Picoult decided to become a writer after she received a failing grade on a paper she wrote about her summer vacation. “I wrote from the point of view of a piano I’d practiced on and she said she didn’t assign fiction,” Pi-coult recalled to Teen Ink. “Of course, she hadn’t assigned nonfiction, either.”

Picoult studied writing at Princeton University under the guidance of memoirist Mary Morris. “She basically ripped me to shreds and showed me I wasn’t as good as I thought I was,” Picoult told Publishers Weekly. “But she also believed in me in a way that made me fight back and realize I could be better . I think the most important thing that she taught me is that a good novel functions as if every chapter is a short story. She taught me that a novel is really just a bunch of connected short stories.”

In 1987, Picoult graduated magna cum laude from Princeton. During college, she had published two stories in Seventeen magazine. Despite this early success, Picoult realized it would be hard to earn a steady income as a writer, so she turned to more solid pursuits and took a job writing bond portfolios for a Wall Street brokerage firm. Picoult also wrote copy for an ad agency and taught eighth-grade English. By 1989, Picoult had married her college sweetheart, Timothy Van Leer, and returned to school, studying for a master’s degree in education at Harvard University.

Around this time, Picoult began working on her first novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale, which concerns an oceanographer who studies whales. Picoult used a unique construction for the book—the story is told by five different characters, each reporting their account of what took place one disastrous summer. Determined to get the book in print, Pi-coult worked tirelessly to find a publisher. “I wouldn’t let it go at a rejection,” she told Stephen Seitz of the New Hampshire Sunday News. “I’d keep calling until they’d take my calls just to get rid of me. If they told me the book wasn’t right for them, I’d ask who it was right for. Then I’d call that person.”

Songs of the Humpback Whale was published in 1992. Shortly after it came out, Picoult gave birth to a son, Kyle. Just as she thought her writing career might take off, Picoult found herself immersed in motherhood and struggled to find balance between work and family. Picoult explored this theme in her next book, 1994’s Harvesting the Heart, which tells the story of a young mother so torn with her identity that she abandons her husband and son. Picoult considers this her most biographical novel. She followed with 1995’s Picture Perfect, another novel exploring family and relationships. In 1996, she published Mercy, which examines love and loyalty.

Picoult points to her husband’s support as being key to helping her turn out novels at such a fast pace. In a biographical sketch posted on her Web site, Picoult wrote, “My husband, who is half antiques dealer/half stay-at-home-dad, is fully responsible for making my life run smoothly.” He drives the carpool, packs the kids’ lunches, and brings her meals so she can concentrate on her work. Picoult begins her days with a 5:30 a.m. walk with friends. After the kids leave for school, she begins writing and researching, working until about 4 p.m.

In 1998, Picoult published The Pact, a heart-rending tale about two teens and a suicide pact gone awry. Lifetime picked up the novel and turned it into a 2002 movie starring Megan Mullally as a grieving mother. Fans tuned in hoping to catch a glimpse of Picoult—she made a brief appearance in the film as a mourner at the funeral of one of her characters. Lifetime also turned Picoult’s Plain Truth into a movie in which she made a similar, brief appearance.

Published in 2000, Plain Truth is a book about an adolescent Amish girl accused of hiding a pregnancy and letting her newborn die. Big-city attorney Ellie Harrison is called in to defend the girl and ends up living among the Amish while she builds her case. In Plain Truth, Picoult is a slave to detail. A conscientious researcher, Picoult spent a week living in an Amish community before writing the novel, waking at 4:30 a.m. to milk cows, attend morning Bible study, and prepare meals. While she was writing Perfect Match, published in 2002, Pi-coult consulted a district attorney to help her script the dialogue for the trial scenes. In Perfect Match, a district attorney struggles to find justice after her son has been sexually abused, allegedly by a priest.

A real page-turner, 2004’s My Sister’s Keeper, was named to the Washington Post’s best fiction books of the year list. The book is about a 13year-old girl named Anna who was brought into the world to be a bone marrow match for her older sister, Kate, who has leukemia. Anna spends her life undergoing sur-geries and transfusions in the name of saving her sister. When Anna’s parents tell her she must donate a kidney to Kate, Anna hires an attorney, hoping to gain the freedom to make her own decisions. In 2005, Picoult published Vanishing Acts, the story of Delia Hopkins, a woman who makes her living tracking down missing people with the help of a bloodhound. On the eve of her wedding, Delia is haunted by a fleeting childhood memory that seems suspiciously out of place with what she knows to be her life. Then, her father is arrested, charged with kidnapping her 28 years before.

The father is sent to an Arizona jail to await trial and readers get a real glimpse of life behind bars, as well as an introduction to running a crystal meth operation. Picoult prides herself in the research she conducted. “I went to a jail in Arizona,” Picoult told Publishers Weekly. “Every detail about jail in that book is real. One of the detention officers set up interviews with inmates for me. The recipe for crystal meth came from an inmate named Corvette Steve. The good news is that I left out some very important steps. Don’t try this at home. It will blow up in your face.”

Picoult is especially proud of 2006’s The Tenth Circle. The book veers from traditional fiction in that it contains traditional narrative passages as well as comic-book panels. The Tenth Circle centers around Daniel Stone, a comic-book artist and father. Daniel is struggling to deny the past, a horrible childhood spent in an Alaskan village where he grew up a loner, the only non-Inuit boy around. After his daughter accuses her boyfriend of date rape, she runs away to the remote village where her father was raised. Daniel follows and is forced to confront his history.

The book contains what is supposed to be one of Daniel’s comic books—this one about a father who literally has to rescue his daughter from hell. Pi-coult worked with San Diego artist Dustin Weaver, who rendered the drawings. The comic panels run between every chapter. The comic can be read by itself as a stand-alone; likewise, the narrative can stand by itself. Or, people can read them simultaneously as they appear in the book. Before writing the novel, Picoult visited the Yup’ik Inuit village on the Alaskan tundra.

Executives at DC Comics took note of Picoult’s graphic novel and approached her about writing some storylines for its Wonder Woman series. Initially, Picoult was leery but her children egged her on. As with any project, Picoult did a lot of prep work before starting. She studied Wonder Woman’s foes and read old Wonder Woman comics, dating back to the 1940s when the superhero fought Nazis. Picoult enjoyed the project, although she found the genre more difficult than fiction since she was used to telling stories as scenes, not panels. Picoult also takes pride in being one of only two women to write for Wonder Woman in the character’s 60year history. Picoult’s first Wonder Woman comic was released in March of 2007.

“It was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities,” Picoult told New Hampshire Magazine’s Rick Broussard. “Who doesn’t want to be Wonder Woman. In a way, the whole juggling of family and real job and sideline jobs and all of that is exactly what Wonder Woman is all about.” Picoult also took the opportunity to personalize the comic. In Picoult’s series, readers will meet Agent Kyle and Agent Jake, who are named after her sons. In one panel, her husband’s name appears on a name plate that sits atop a desk.

Picoult’s 2007 book, Nineteen Minutes, debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The novel, which takes place in a fictional New Hampshire town, focuses on a 17year-old boy who kills ten classmates during a 19minute rampage, then has to face the consequences. Picoult used the book to explore today’s cultural conditions and how they might contribute to the problem of school violence. The killer, Peter, is an outcast, small for his age, and taunted for speaking “Martian.” He has been bullied since kindergarten.

The book caused a stir in Picoult’s hometown of Hanover, New Hampshire, and was removed from the high school’s reading list because administrators thought the setting resembled the town too closely and feared a copycat crime. Before beginning the novel, Picoult researched the 1999 Colum-bine killings, receiving detailed information from a sheriff’s deputy. She wound up with a DVD of Col-umbine shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris and got to watch them take target practice at a tree, shouting out the names of classmates they despised.

While Picoult’s books have won numerous awards and landed atop bestseller lists, there are critics who say her intricate plots lack credibility because of their soap opera nature. Others accuse her of simply latching on to the day’s hottest issues. Pi-coult shakes off such criticism and told Writer’s Leslie Garisto Pfaff that many of her ideas come from exploring moral issues she is unsure about. Other times, she starts thinking about some tragedy that could befall her family and goes from there. “I start with the ‘What if?’ question—what if this were to happen? And then it almost feels like the idea is percolating. I just have to let it sit in my brain and, eventually, little things jump out, and when they do, it’s almost like popcorn in a Jiffy Pop bag—the idea broadens in scope until it’s not just about one narrow, little ‘What if?’ question, but a bigger, more universal moral question.”