We’ll finish off Women’s History Month with these two novelists.
Eleanor Emily Hodgman Porter was born on Dec. 19, 1868, in Littleton, New Hampshire. She attended the New England Conservatory for several years, training as a singer. In 1892 she married businessman John Lyman Porter and they relocated to Massachusetts. It was there Eleanor began writing and publishing her short stories and novels. By 1901, she had turned entirely from music to writing.
Her stories were mainly adventure, literature for children and romance fiction. She is most famous for her 1913 novel Pollyanna and the 1915 sequel Pollyanna Grows Up.
In 1916, Pollyanna was made into a Broadway play, which starred Helen Hayes. Four years later, it became a movie (or as they were called in 1920, “motion picture”) which starred Mary Pickford and then Haley Mills in the 1960 remake.
Porter went on to write several more novels and short stories before her death on May 21, 1920, in Cambridge, Mass.
Jodi Lynn Picoult was born on Long Island in 1966. She was five years old when she wrote her first story "The Lobster Which Misunderstood". In 1983 she graduated from Smithtown High School East. At Princeton University, Picoult studied creative writing, graduating in 1987. She married Timothy van Leer in 1989; currently residing in Hanover, NH with their three children.
Picoult’s accomplishments include two short stories in the magazine Seventeen; she has edited textbooks and taught eighth-grade English. She has a master’s degree from Harvard University, received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Dartmouth College in 2010 and another one from University of New Haven in 2012. In 2013, Picoult was a member of the inaugural Writers Council of the National Writing Project. This organization recognizes the "universality of writing as a communicative tool and helps teachers enhance student writing."
As an activist, in 2010, she led the 5th Annual Children's Hospital at Dartmouth Hero Half Marathon & Relay 5K Walk around Occom Pond and through the town of Hanover. She is a member of the Advisory Committee for the NH Coalition Against the Death Penalty. (As an aside, the death penalty in NH came to an end on May 30, 2019. Before that, Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed the bill, but legislators had enough votes to override the veto.) With the famous Women's March on Washington taking place not only in Washington DC, on Jan. 21, 2017, but similar marches in cities nationwide, Picoult was a keynote speaker at the New Hampshire Women's Day of Action and Unity in Concord.
You know you’ve made it as an author when your books are targeted for banning! In March 2023, twenty of Picoult's books were taken out of the Martin County School District in Florida. They were to be reviewed for “potentially inappropriate content.” According to Picoult, the complaint came from one parent who depicted her books as "adult romance.” Picoult refuted the complaint, stating: "What [the books] do have, however, are issues like racism, abortion rights, gun control, gay rights, and other topics that encourage kids to think for themselves." Picoult has criticized Moms for Liberty who have called for the removal of her books. Her 2007 book, Nineteen Minutes, was one of 374 books being targeted for banning from school libraries in Iowa’s Urbandale Community School District during the summer of 2023.