Marya Hornbacher
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Marya Justine Hornbacher (born 4 April 1974) is an American author and freelance journalist. Her book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, is an autobiographical account of her struggle with eating disorders, written when she was only twenty-two. It was nominated for the 1998Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction and has since been translated into fourteen languages and sold over a million copies in the U.S. Wasted was banned in many public school systems due to its many drug and alcohol references as well as repeated sexual encounters. Her second book is the critically praised 2005 novel, The Center of Winter, which follows a family in the aftermath of a suicide. Her third book, published in April 2008, is a memoir called Madness: A Bipolar Life, written after she was diagnosed with bipolar disease.
[edit] Life
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Marya Hornbacher was born in Walnut Creek, California but raised in Edina, Minnesota where her family moved when she was 9. Her parents, Jay and Judy Hornbacher, both worked as professional theatre actors and directors; her mother also worked as a school administrator. Hornbacher became bulimic at age nine and had developed drug and alcohol problems by age thirteen. At age fifteen, she was accepted into the prestigious arts boarding school Interlochen where she developed anorexia.
The summer following her first year at Interlochen she was hospitalized for her eating disorder and the following fall she moved to her father's ex-wife's home in Southern California. While there she met her future husband, Julian Daniel Beard, but her eating disorder steadily worsened and she was rehospitalized after Christmas. She was released in February but readmitted again after only two weeks. In March her insurance pulled out and, unable to find any other affordable option, her parents sent her to Lowe House, a residential treatment hospital for adolescents with severe, long-term mental problems.
After her release that summer, she enrolled in the University of Minnesota and started writing for the local paper. She turned eighteen that April and, despite her continued eating disorder, signed out of treatment. In the fall of 1992, she entered college at American University in Washington D.C.. Her eating disorder rapidly worsened and by the winter she had dropped to fifty-two pounds. On a visit home to her parents, she was admitted to the ER and given one week to live.
Though Hornbacher survived her ordeal, she has been left with many physical ailments as a result however, including osteoporosis, a heart murmur and infertility. After her final hospitalization, Marya continued to struggle with her underlying emotional problems, and in 1994 attempted suicide. She also began to self-harm by cutting herself with razor blades.
Marya ended up marrying her best friend from California, Julian, but they divorced after the success of Wasted. Marya has said that this was due in part to her problems with drugs and alcohol. She has now been sober for over five years. Marya now lives in Minneapolis with her husband photographer Jeff Miller, their cats Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot, and their miniature dachsunds Milton and Dante.[1]
Marya received a Master's Degree from the New College of California. Her second book, The Center of Winter, received excellent reviews. Her second memoir, this one covering the years following those written about in Wasted, called Madness: A Bipolar Life, was published in April 2008. Hornbacher writes full-time, working at her home in Minneapolis. She still writes occasional journalistic pieces for a number of magazines, and was recently honored with a major award for music journalism, a profile of jazz great Oscar Peterson.Madness: A Bipolar Life was published on April 9, 2008.
