Jacqueline Mitchard TOPICS: Success Empowerment Entertainment FEE CATEGORY:* 5.0k to 10.0k TRAVELS FROM: Wisconsin Profile Books & Videos Request This Speaker

Jacqueline Mitchard: Profile

Jacquelyn Mitchard has considered changing her name legally to The Deep End of the Ocean. This is because her own name is much less well-known than the title of her first book which was chosen as the first novel in the book club made famous by the TV host Oprah Winfrey, and writ large on the big screen by Hollywood beauty and darn nice lady Michelle Pfeiffer (who can, if she wishes, star in another movie suggested by a book of mine any old time).

In fact, though, Mitchard has written six other novels, some of them bestsellers, and some even better than The Deep End of the Ocean. She also is the recent author of a children's novel, a young adult novel and two picture book, one about a mother bat trying to get her baby to fall asleep during the day. Three future children's books are in development. Her essays have been widely anthologized, most recently in A Love Like No Other, edited by Pamela Krueger and Jill Smolowe, and she has published several short stories. – one of which, a shivery Gothic tale about a knife and a Ukranian were-woman – will appear on the new Amazon "Buy-a-Story" feature. Her newest novel, Cage of Stars, appears in May, 2006.

A newspaper reporter since 1976, she now writes a nationally-syndicated column for Tribune Media. It appears in a varying number of newspapers around the country, but is particularly revered, for some reason, in Iowa. A contributing editor for the new Disney parenthood magazine, Wondertime, she also was a longtime editor for Parenting magazine.

Mitchard lives on an old farm south of Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, Chris Brent and their seven children, who range in age from one to twenty-one. Chris is a stay-at-home father, who does yeoman school duties and occasionally builds large houses and gardens. His wife is grateful.

They share their little prairie enclave with Mitchard's dear friend and assistant, Pamela English, her husband Andy, their son Carter, who's often mistaken for the twin of Mitchard's son Will, along with two goats and a raucous number of cats - only two of which are allowed into the barn. They are Bronte and Heathcliffe.

Heathcliffe's mother, Cathy, vanished onto the moors — and wouldn't she just? Mitchard’s dog, Hobbes, a mutt, pictured on the home page, is one of the finest people she has ever met, and she would have him cloned, but has read Pet Sematary.

When she is not writing fiction and non-fiction, Mitchard's hobby is spreading compost around new trees, which some would say is a task metaphorically related to fiction. She regularly loses and finds the same ten pounds and five inches of hairstyle.

She also travels to promote awareness of colorectal cancer, which took the life of her first husband, award-winning reporter Dan Allegretti, in 1993, and of multiple sclerosis, which interferes in the life of her gallant best friend from childhood. Her favorite color is periwinkle blue; her favorite holiday is Halloween; her favorite flower is freesia; her favorite word is "smite," and her second favorite is "Massachusetts"; her lucky number is 11. Her favorite place on earth is just west of Florence, where she does not plan on buying a house. Her pet peeves are rude merchants, restaurants with only one high chair and signs that feature family names with an apostrophe "S." Her truest ambition is to appear on even one episode of "Law and Order," in any role, except, preferably, that of a murder victim found by earth-moving equipment in a landfill.

Her truest talent is knowing almost all the lyrics of almost all the pop songs, including some rap, written since about 1938, so long as she has heard a song once.

A native of the west side of Chicago, where she developed a pathological avoidance of golf and bowling, she is the daughter of a plumber and a mom who worked at the five and dime, but also rode the rodeo and was as beautiful as a Hollywood movie star. Her birthday is the same date as Emily Dickinson's – though a few years later. She has one adored brother, a brother-in-law, three swell sisters-in-law (including a budding author!) and a mother-in-law who had the kindness to have read her books before she met her.

She has two nieces and two nephews, and an MFA in friendship studies. Beyond reading everything she could buy or borrow (but she prides herself on always returning a book) she never studied writing beyond freshman electives. She is deeply superstitious, and will not leave shoes on a table or walk on a different side of a fixed object from someone she loves. When she wishes on the first star, her wish is always the same: to live to a great age, but to be outlived by all of her children.

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