Alice Hoffman, an American novelist and screenwriter, was born in New York City in 1952. She earned a B.A. from Adelphi University in 1973 and an M.A. from Stanford in 1975 before publishing her first novel, Property Of, in 1977. Known for blending realism and fantasy in her fiction, Hoffman often creates richly detailed characters who live on society's margins and places them in extraordinary situations as she did with At Risk, her 1988 novel about the AIDS crisis. Other novels include The Drowning Season (named a "notable book of 1979" by Library Journal) and Seventh Heaven, which first gained Hoffman a broad national audience. She has also written many screenplays, including adaptations… of her own novels.