Beverly Donofrio is an award-winning essayist and memoirist who gained notoriety when her first book, the bestselling Riding in Cars with Boys, appeared at the start of the wave of memoirs that followed. Praised by Variety as a “working class Chekhov,” Bev writes with humor about a dead serious subject: being a teen and a single mother while trying to grow up herself. The movies came knocking before the book was published, and after many years of development, it starred Drew Barrymore, was directed by Penny Marshall, and became a cult classic.

When Bev turned forty, despite worldly success, a painful longing awakened a desire to believe in something greater than herself. Her second memoir, Looking for Mary, is Bev’s journey, a pilgrimage of sorts, to faith through the Virgin Mary.

Her third memoir begins when something powerful and awful interrupts Bev’s life, and the real question becomes not, Why did this awful thing happen, but what is she going to do now that it has? Astonished is a heartening story of healing and grace.

Her two picture books, Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and Mary; and Where’s Mommy?, both illustrated by the inimitable Barbara McClintock, have won awards, and her middle-grade book, Thank You, Lucky Stars, gets kids on their feet and dancing all over the place.

Bev lectures at universities, libraries, literary festivals, book fairs and is known for touching her audiences with her truth telling and honesty. The Q & A sessions are always lively.

She’s been called a master memoirist and loves to teach craft—including that bugaboo structure—while sharing insights, and inspiring students to go deep and write what their hearts are longing to say.