“Picoult has become a master—almost a clairvoyant—at targeting hot issues and writing highly readable page-turners about them.”

—The Washington Post

With a fluid and wide-ranging style, bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult has been compared to writers as diverse as Alice Hoffman, John Grisham, and Daphne du Maurier. In her novels, she examines important social issues that are as thought-provoking as they are divisive. Her fiction nods to many genres, including literary fiction, legal thrillers, psychological portraits, romances, and ghost stories, giving her readers a fresh experience with each book. Picoult has written 30 novels and has an estimated 40 million books in print. The past fourteen of her novels have debuted at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list, and five of her books have been made into movies. Picoult’s latest novel, Hollow Bones, praised as “a powerful and deeply affecting exploration of grief, loss, guilt, and enduring love” (Booklist, starred review), is an epic story about the risks we take to protect the ones we love in a world where crisis is always just around the corner. 

Picoult’s first novel, Songs of the Humpback Whale, weaves five narrative voices into a story of love, loss, and self-discovery, which Publishers Weekly called a “powerful and affecting novel that demonstrates there are as many truths to a story as there are people to tell it.” Her critically acclaimed third book, Picture Perfect, is the story of an anthropologist trapped in a cycle of domestic abuse with her glamorous movie star husband. Library Journal praised the novel as “an important book from a talented writer we hope to hear from again and again.” In My Sister’s Keeper, Picoult tells the story of a thirteen-year-old, Anna, who was conceived by her parents specifically as a bone-marrow donor for her sister Kate, who has leukemia. The novel focuses on Anna’s search for identity in a life that was predetermined by her genetic ability to help her sister. Kirkus declared that Picoult “vividly evokes the physical and psychic toll a desperately sick child imposes on a family, even a close and loving one.” Her novel Nineteen Minutes was the winner of the NH Library Association’s Flume Award and winner of the Iowa HS Book Award. Entertainment Weekly called it “vintage Picoult, expertly crafted, thought-provoking, and compelling” and gave it an A grade.

In her recent novels, Picoult has taken on some of the most consequential social issues of our day. Small Great Things, “one of the hardest” books yet for her to write, explores racism in America through the lens of a tragic incident at a Connecticut hospital. The Washington Post praised the novel as “the most important novel Jodi Picoult has ever written.” A film adaptation from Amblin Entertainment is in the works, with Viola Davis and Julia Roberts attached as stars. Another instant New York Times #1 bestseller, A Spark of Light is a powerful and provocative novel about reproductive rights set during a hostage situation at a women’s health clinic. The Star-Tribune called it “a courageous and important work” and it will be adapted into a limited television series by Sony Pictures TV starring Joey King. Other bestsellers include Wish You Were Here and Mad Honey, co-authored with Jennifer Finney Boylan.

Picoult’s first YA novel, co-written with her daughter Samantha van Leer, Between the Lines, was adapted into an Off-Broadway musical. She also wrote the musical adaptation of Markus Zusak’s novel The Book Thief which opened at the UK’s Octagon Theatre and is slated to open on the West End in 2025, as well as the original musical Breathe with co-librettist Timothy Allen McDonald.

Her latest novel, By Any Other Name, is an “inspiring” (Elle) story about two women, centuries apart—one of whom, Emilia Bassano, is thought by some historians to be the real author of Shakespeare’s plays—who are forced to hide behind another name to make their voices heard. A story about how women have been written out of history by men—and how little has changed in 400 years—By Any Other Name debuted at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list, was named an IndieNext pick and selected for the LibraryReads list. 

In 2003, Picoult was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for Fiction. She has also received an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association, the BookBrowse Diamond Award for novel of the year, a lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the Romance Writers of America, Cosmopolitan’s Fun Fearless Fiction Award, Waterstone’s Author of the Year in the UK, a Vermont Green Mountain Book Award, a NH Granite State Book Award, a Virginia Reader’s Choice Award, the Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award, and a Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award. Picoult was the 2013-14 recipient of the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Literary Merit and the 2019 Sarah Josepha Hale Award. She received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Dartmouth College in 2010 and another from the University of New Haven in 2012. 

She and her husband Tim live in Hanover, New Hampshire with a Springer spaniel, two rescue puppies, two donkeys, ten chickens, and the occasional Holstein.

For more information about Jodi Picoult, please visit her on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and at jodipicoult.com.