Meredith Maran published her first poem in Highlights For Kids at age 6, her first national magazine article at age 15, and her first book at age 18. In the years that followed she built a house and raised goats outside Taos, lived with the cast of "Hair" in London, and installed brakes and union consciousness on the Ford assembly line in San Jose. Meredith got her first "real job" with Banana Republic in 1987, then created award-winning socially responsible marketing campaigns for companies including Ben & Jerry's, Working Assets, Stoneyfield Farms, Smith & Hawken, and Odwalla.

Meredith resumed her journalistic career in 1982. Since then she's become a regular contributor to Salon.com, Health, Family Circle, and More magazines. She also writes for Self, Vibe, Parenting, Mother Jones, Utne Reader, Bride's, Teacher, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury-News. She has written and co-authored eight books, several of them best-sellers, all of them focused on her greatest passion: the difference between how things are in America and how they should be--and what we can (and must!) do about it.

Since publishing two books on the subject of teenagers, Meredith has been speaking to policy makers, educators, parents, treatment providers, and community activists who advocate for kids. Venues to date include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Charles Schwab Foundation, Stanford Business School, UC Berkeley Law School, Educators for Social Responsibility, and the Education Writers of America.

From 2004-2006 she was Writer in Residence at UCLA. In 2006 she was Writer in Residence at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos. She has cherished her residencies at Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Mesa Refuge Resident Program.

Meredith lives in Oakland and has two grown (and growing) sons, Peter (Peter Graham Photography) and Jesse (About Jesse Graham). She is happily married to the horticultural genius Katrine Thomas, whether Arnold Schwarzenegger likes it or not.