[close] Sue Monk Kidd was born in the small city of Sylvester in Georgia. She felt the pull to write as a child, but because of the attitudes in the South during her youth, she only took to writing aound the age of thirty. She started with spiritual and religious texts, about Christianity, and only began writing fiction when she was in her forties. She began working on her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, in 1997 and it was published in 2002 by Viking, to instant acclaim. It has sold more than 4.5 million copies, been over two years on the New York Times bestseller list and been translated into more than 23 languages.

Her second novel, The Mermaid Chair, was published in 2005, and has been a great success as well. In 2006, a collection of Kidd's early, spiritual and religious writings was published, called Firstlight.

Kidd's now working on a new novel, and lives with her husband Sandy and their black lab Lily near Charleston, South Carolina. [close]