Julianna Baggott (born 30 September 1969) is a novelist, essayist and poet who also writes under pen names Bridget Asher and N.E. Bode. She is an associate professor at Florida State University's Creative Writing Program.[1]
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Baggott has published sixteen books over the last ten years. Film rights for her forthcoming novel Pure have been acquired by Fox 2000 and will be published by Grand Central Publishing. The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, published under pen name Asher, will be published this spring. To date, there are thirty-nine foreign editions of her novels.
Baggot began publishing when she was twenty-two. After receiving her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she published her first novel, Girl Talk, while she was still in her twenties. Girl Talk was a national bestseller and was quickly followed by Boston Globe bestseller The Miss America Family, and then Boston Herald Book Club selection, The Madam, a historical novel based on the life of her grandmother. She co-wrote Which Brings Me to You with Steve Almond, A Best Book of 2006 (Kirkus Reviews) optioned by producer Richard Brown and adapted by Keith Bunin.
Her latest novel, The Pretend Wife, under the pen name Bridget Asher, was published in June 2009. Her first Bridget Asher novel, My Husband's Sweethearts has sixteen overseas editions. In spring 2011, Random House will publish The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted, with another Asher novel under contract.
She also writes bestselling novels for younger readers under the pen name N.E. Bode as well as under Julianna Baggott. The Anybodies trilogy was a People Magazine pick alongside David Sedaris and Bill Clinton, a Washington Post Book of the Week, a Girls' Life Top Ten, a Booksense selection, and was in development at Nickelodeon/Paramount; The Slippery Map (fall 2007), and the prequel to Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (2007), a movie starring Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, and Jason Bateman. For two years, Bode was a recurring personality on Sirius XM Radio.
Julianna's Boston Red Sox novel The Prince of Fenway Park (HarperCollins), was published in spring 2009. The Ever Breath (Random House) was published in December 2009.
Baggott has also published three collections of poetry (This Country of Mothers, Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees, and Lizzie Borden in Love) and has been published in major literary publications, including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and The Best American Poetry.
Baggott's work has appeared in AGNI,[2] The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Glamour, Ms., Real Simple, and read on NPR's Here and Now and Talk of the Nation. Her essays, stories, and poems are highly anthologized.
She is a confessed liar[3] and lives in Florida with her husband writer David G.W. Scott and their four kids. In 2006, Baggott and her husband co-founded the nonprofit organization Kids in Need-Books in Deed, that focuses on literacy and getting free books to underprivileged children in the state of Florida.[4]