Joy Fielding is a successful Canadian novelist, known for her work in the romance and suspense genres. Born in Toronto, Ontario as Joy Tepperman, she began writing at a young age, submitting stories to magazines at the age of eight and TV scripts by the time she was twelve. Although she had a brief acting career, appearing in an episode of Gunsmoke and the film Winter Kept Us Warm, she eventually changed her last name to Fielding, inspired by 18th century novelist Henry Fielding, and pursued a career in writing.\n \nFielding is a graduate of the University of Toronto, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature in 1966. She began writing full-time in 1972, and has since published 22 novels, two of which have been adapted into films. Fielding is known for her meticulous process, taking a year from idea to finished novel, with the writing itself taking four to eight months. She has stated that her preference is to set her novels in big American cities, such as Boston and Chicago, as she finds the landscape more conducive to her themes of urban alienation and loss of identity.
Fielding is a Canadian citizen and divides her time between Toronto, Ontario and Palm Beach, Florida. She is married to Warren, and they have two daughters, Annie and Shannon. She has expressed her enjoyment in catching readers off guard with the endings of her stories, but insists that her fiction is more about character development than plot twists. Although she has been more popular in the United States and foreign countries, she has recently switched to a Canadian publisher. Fielding's novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Still Life, Charley's Web, Heartstopper, and See Jane Run, have been praised for their strong characters, good dialogue, and engaging stories.