Joyce Maynard

A native of New Hampshire, Joyce Maynard began publishing her stories in magazines when she was thirteen years old. She first came to national attention with the publication of her New York Times cover story, “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life”, in 1972, when she was a freshman at Yale University. Since then, she has been a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, a syndicated newspaper columnist whose “Domestic Affairs” column appeared in over fifty papers nationwide, a regular contributor to National Public Radio and national magazines including Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, and many more. She is a longtime performer with The Moth.

She is the author of eighteen books, including the New York Times bestselling novels "Labor Day" and "To Die For" (both adapted for film), "Under the Influence," and the memoirs "At Home in the World" and "The Best of Us." Her most recent work, "How the Light Gets In," was published in 2024 and is a follow-up to her 2021 novel, "Count the Ways," a story about a marriage, a divorce, and the children who survived it

Maynard is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. She is the founder of Write by the Lake, a week-long workshop on the art and craft of memoir, held every year since 2001 at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala.