Author Anna Quindlen was born in Philadelphia on July 8, 1953. She graduated from Barnard in 1974 and serves on their Board of Trustees. Quindlen worked as a reporter for the New York Post and the New York Times and wrote columns for the Times. She won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary before devoting herself to writing fiction. She has written both adult fiction (including Object Lessons, Black and Blue and One True Thing, which was made into a motion picture starring Meryl Streep) and children's fiction (Happily Ever After and The Tree That Came to Stay). Currently, she is a columnist at Newsweek. Her title Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake made The New York Times Best Seller list for… 2012.Mary Lawson's first novel, Crow Lake, was admired by critics and adored by readers all over the world; translated into 23 languages and published in 25 countries, it was a New York Times bestseller and spent 75 weeks on the bestseller lists in her native Canada. It was chosen by You magazine for its Reading Group and won the McKitterick Prize. Her second novel, The Other Side of the Bridge, was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and selected for the Richard and Judy book club. Lawson was born and brought up in a farming community in Ontario, but came to England in 1968. She is married with two grown-up sons and lives in Kingston-upon-Thames.