General Bio:
J.H. Diehl's novel Tiny Infinities is a Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of the Year, a Junior Library Guild Gold Selection, and Mighty Girl Book of the Year. Her picture books include Loon Chase and Three Little Beavers, and her short fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, Enhanced Gravity, Antietam Review, Kestrel, Bethesda Magazine and others. She is the recipient of a Michener Fellowship and a Maryland Individual Artist Award, and was a finalist for an SCWBI Grant for a Contemporary Novel.
Jean Heilprin Diehl was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in the nearby suburbs, the setting for some of her fiction. After studying English at Yale she worked as a feature writer, covered small towns and the cops and courts beat for the Concord Monitor in Concord, N.H., and volunteered at NHPR, where she hosted The Folk Show. Jean moved to Buenos Aires to work as a radio stringer before attending the Iowa Writers Workshop for an MFA in Fiction. Following grad school, she lived in Warsaw and Jerusalem during her husband Jackson Diehl's tours as a foreign correspondent. Jean has taught writing, literature and composition at the University of Iowa, Hebrew University and Montgomery College, and in high schools and elementary schools. She's worked as an education writer for Trillium Publishing, Pearson and others, and served as an SCBWI Creative Coaching Mentor. Jean and Jackson have two adult children and live with their rescue dog Wilson in Maryland and New Hampshire.
For Gr2-8 Author Visits:
J.H. (Jean) Diehl was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the nearby Maryland suburbs. She learned to read at age six at Bannockburn Elemenary, where she had the good fortune to be in Gretchen Van Pool's first grade class. Like Jean, Ms. Van Pool happened to be both red-headed and left-handed, which made learning to print the alphabet a lot easier. Soon, her favorite places became the children's room in the lower level of Little Falls Public Library, and her bed at home where she read the piles of books she brought home from the library.
In sixth grade she "published" her first book, a collection of poems called “Poems About Nothing In Particular But Something." There were only three copies, but seeing her words on the pages gave Jean a powerful feeling: it was her voice speaking and nobody could change what she said because there the words were, printed. She's wanted to be a writer ever since.
She’s 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 Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year. She's also the author of two picture books, LOON CHASE and THREE LITTLE BEAVERS. Jean 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 over the years and became lifelong friends. Jean is always looking for more great reads. She hopes you’ll recommend a few of your favorites!