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. 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 NPR and national magazines including Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, and many more. She is a longtime performer with The Moth. 

Joyce Maynard

Side-by-side black and white photos of a woman as a child and as an adult, sitting on outdoor steps with a thoughtful expression, resting her chin on her hand and barefoot.

Author of twenty books.

including the New York Times bestselling novel, 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 latest novel, In Wonderland, is a psychological thriller about a young girl named Frances who trades her working-class world for an elite Maine lakeside estate―where privilege and betrayal turn into a deadly game.

How the Light Gets In is the sequel to Count the Ways, published in 2024.

The Bird Hotel (Arcade Publishing) was published May 2, 2023.

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.

50 YEARS 1973 - 2023

Media, Interviews and Reviews