Jacquelyn Mitchard was born in Chicago. Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was published in 1996, becoming the first selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club and a number one New York Times bestseller. Nine other novels, four children's books and six young adult novels followed, including Two if By Sea, No Time to Wave Goodbye, Still Summer, All We Know of Heaven, and The Breakdown Lane. Mitchard's writing has won or been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, UK's Talkabout Prize, and the Bram Stoker Award. A former daily newspaper reporter, Mitchard now is Editor-in-Chief of Merit Press, and frequently writes for such publications as Glamour, Real Simple, and Readers Digest. Her essays and short stories have been widely anthologized. A professor in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, she lives on Cape Cod with her family.