Meredith Maran published her first poem in Highlights For Kids at age 6, her first national magazine article at age 15, and her first book at age 18. In the years that followed she built a house and raised goats outside Taos, installed brakes on the Ford assembly line in San Jose, and wrote an exposé of right-wing fundamentalism in Silicon Valley while working as a technical writer at National Semiconductor. After serving as Editor of the Banana Republic Catalogue (when Banana Republic was still cool), she created award-winning marketing campaigns for socially responsible businesses including Ben & Jerry's, Working Assets, Stonyfield Farm, Smith & Hawken, and Odwalla.

Meredith has been a keynote speaker at venues including the SNAP Conference, the California Writer's Club, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Charles Schwab Foundation, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Educators for Social Responsibility, and the Education Writers of America. She’s been Writer in Residence at UCLA and at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, and a fellow at MacDowell, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Mesa Refuge, and Ragdale.

The author of eleven nonfiction books and a novel, and a member of the National Book Critics Circle, Meredith writes features, essays, and book reviews for People, Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, Self, Real Simple, Ladies Home Journal, Mother Jones, Family Circle, and More.

She lives in Los Angeles, where it’s sunny almost every day.