Jodi Picoult | Uncommon Sense

“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo—far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.”

—Jodi Picoult (born May 19, 1966), from her novel My Sister’s Keeper. Though born and raised on Long Island, this best-selling writer lives with her family in Hanover, New Hampshire, and many of her 25 novels have been set in New England. Last year she won the Sarah Josepha Hale Award, which recognizes the region’s best writers; past winners include Robert Frost and May Sarton. As Picoult told her local paper, The Valley News, “It was almost as if someone said, ‘OK, you’re a real New Englander now.’”