General Bio:
J.H. Diehl's novel Tiny Infinities was named a Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year, a Junior Library Guild Gold Selection, and a Mighty Girl Book of the Year. Her latest book, The Daydreaming Sink, is a collection of nonsense verse inspired by the work of Edward Lear. Other books include the picture books Loon Chase and Three Little Beavers; her short fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, Enhanced Gravity, Antietam Review, Kestrel, and Bethesda Magazine. She is the recipient of a James Michener Fellowship and a Maryland Individual Artist Award.
Jean Heilprin Diehl was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in the nearby suburbs, the setting for some of her fiction. She studied English at Yale, then worked as a reporter for the Concord Monitor in Concord, New Hampshire, and volunteered at NHPR as host of The Folk Show. While attending the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she divided her time between Iowa City, Buenos Aires and Warsaw. After completing her MFA in Fiction, she lived in Warsaw and Jerusalem during her husband Jackson Diehl's tours as a foreign correspondent.
Jean has taught at the University of Iowa, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Montgomery College, and in elementary and high schools, and has served as an SCBWI Creative Coaching Mentor. She has also worked as an education writer, creating classroom materials, and is a past president of the Children's Book Guild of Washington, DC. Jean and Jackson have two grown children and live in Maryland and New Hampshire with their rescue dog, Wilson.
For Gr2-8 Author Visits:
J.H. (Jean) Diehl was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the nearby Maryland suburbs. She learned to read at age six at Bannockburn Elementary, where she had the great good fortune to be in Gretchen Van Pool's first-grade class. Like Jean, Ms. Van Pool was red-headed and also left-handed, which made learning to print the alphabet a lot easier. Soon, the children's room in the lower level of Little Falls Public Library became Jean's favorite place, and her second favorite place was her bed at home where she read all the books she brought home from the library.
In sixth grade Jean started writing poems and put them together into a collection she called “Poems About Nothing In Particular But Something." Seeing them on typed pages gave Jean a powerful feeling: there her words were, printed. Her voice was speaking. She's wanted to be a writer ever since.
Jean has worked as a newspaper reporter, a creator of materials that help kids learn to read, an English teacher, and a writing teacher. She’s lived in four states, Maryland, Iowa, Connecticut and New Hampshire, and five countries, the U.S., United Kingdom, Argentina, Poland, and Israel.
Her novel TINY INFINITIES was a Bank Street Best Book of the Year, a Junior Library Guild Gold Selection, and a Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year. Her newest book is THE DAYDREAMING SINK, a collection of silly poems and drawings about objects you might find around the house. Jean is also the author of two picture books, LOON CHASE and THREE LITTLE BEAVERS. She and her husband have a son and a daughter and live with their rescue dog, Wilson, part of the year in New Hampshire and the rest of the time in Maryland, about ten minutes from the house where she read all those books as a kid. She and Ms. Van Pool stayed in touch and became lifelong friends. Jean is always looking for more great reads. She hopes you’ll recommend a few of your favorites!