Jodi Picoult

Jodi Lynn Picoult is an American writer born in 1966 in Nesconset, New York, on Long Island. She grew up with one younger brother, graduated from Smithtown High School East in June 1983, and has described her family as “non-practicing Jewish.” Writing came early: at age five she wrote a story called “The Lobster Which Misunderstood.” Education also mattered in her home. Her mother and grandmother were both teachers, and Picoult has said their influence on her was very important.

Picoult studied creative writing at Princeton University with Mary Morris and graduated in 1987 with an A.B. in English after completing a 320-page senior thesis titled “Developments.” While still in college, she published two short stories in Seventeen magazine. After graduation she worked in several jobs, from editing textbooks to teaching eighth-grade English, and later earned a master’s degree in education from Harvard University. She has received honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from Dartmouth College in 2010 and the University of New Haven in 2012, and in 2016 she was chosen as Princeton’s Class Day Speaker before commencement.

As of 2026, Picoult has published 28 novels, several short stories, and several issues of Wonder Woman. About 40 million copies of her books are in print worldwide, and they have been translated into 34 languages. In 2003 she received the New England Bookseller Award for fiction. Her fiction is often described as popular fiction, family saga, and procedural drama, with stories that place relatives on opposite sides of moral conflicts. Her subjects have included abortion, the Holocaust, assisted suicide, race relations, eugenics, LGBT rights, fertility issues, religion, the death penalty, and school shootings.

Her novel Nineteen Minutes, published on March 9, 2007, concerns the aftermath of a school shooting in a small town and became her first book to debut at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list. Change of Heart, published in 2008, Handle with Care in 2009, and House Rules in 2010 also reached number one. In 2007 she wrote Wonder Woman volume 3 for DC Comics, beginning with issue 6 on March 28 and ending with issue 10 on June 27. Her work has sometimes been categorized as chick-lit, a label often used dismissively, but Picoult has said she accepts less critical acclaim in exchange for sales and readership.

Picoult has also been active in public debates around writing, reading, and access to books. Since 2013 she has been a member of the inaugural Writers Council of the National Writing Project, and she is a member of the advisory board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. In 2023 she criticized book bannings in the United States, especially in Florida, after 92 titles, including 20 of her own, were removed from Florida’s Martin County School District for review. Her Nineteen Minutes was also reviewed by an Iowa school district under a new law, and PEN America listed it among the most banned books of the 2023–2024 academic year. In 2024 she worked with Unite Against Book Bans on tour events about library censorship. Picoult’s words still matter to many readers because her books ask plain, hard questions about family, law, belief, and the choices people make when no answer feels easy.