2024 Bombeck Workshop Keynoter Jacquelyn Mitchard

Jacquelyn Mitchard is a New York Times bestselling author of 23 novels for adults and teenagers.

Her first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean (1999), was the inaugural Oprah’s Book Club selection; it was adapted into a film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Her novel Still Summer has also been adapted for a film, and The Midnight Twins, a teen trilogy, is in development for a limited series by Kaleidoscope Entertainment. Her essay collection The Rest of Us: Dispatches from the Mother Ship was drawn from her syndicated newspaper column.

She served on the fiction jury for the 2003 National Book Awards. She has been a fellow of the Ragdale Foundation and received the MacDowell organization’s DeWitt Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fellowship.

She has taught creative writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Miami University and Western New England University and was a speechwriter for former U.S. Rep. and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala.

A Chicago native, Mitchard grew up the daughter of a plumber and a hardware store clerk who met as rodeo riders. She lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts with her husband and their nine children. Her newest novel, A Very Inconvenient Scandal (Mira/HarperCollins), is set for release Nov. 14.