J. Courtney Sullivan

Sullivan's fourth novel was named one of the ten best books of the year by the Washington Post, a New York Times Critic's Pick for 2017 and was a finalist for the New England Book Award. Richard Russo said, "I hope to read another novel as strong and wise and beautiful and heartbreaking as Saints For All Occasions this year, but I'm not sure I will."

Evelyn has been married to her husband for forty years—forty years since he slipped off her first wedding ring and put his own in its place. Delphine has seen both sides of love—the ecstatic, glorious highs of seduction, and the bitter, spiteful fury that descends when it's over. James, a paramedic who works the night shift, knows his wife's family thinks she could have done better; while Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding—beach weddings, backyard weddings, castle weddings—and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own. As these lives and marriages unfold in surprising ways, we meet Frances Gerety, a young advertising copywriter in 1947. Frances is working on the De Beers campaign and she needs a signature line, so, one night before bed, she scribbles a phrase on a scrap of paper: "A Diamond Is Forever." And that line changes everything.

In 2011, Oprah's Book Club included Commencement in a list of "5 Feminist Classics to (Re)read as a Mom, Wife and Writer".

Maine was named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post and one of the top ten fiction books of 2011 by TIME magazine. It was a New York Times bestseller, and has sold half a million copies since its publication.

In 2010, Sullivan published her first novel, Commencement, which focuses on the experiences of four friends at Smith College, Sullivan's alma mater. She wrote 15 different drafts of the book before sending it to her editor, after which it underwent two or three more revisions.

She self-identifies as a feminist, a stance that has been reflected in both her fiction and nonfiction work. In 2006, she wrote a piece for the New York Times "Modern Love" column about her experiences in the dating world, and in 2010 she co-edited a feminist essay collection titled Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. Her novels deal prominently with relationships between female characters. In 2017, Sullivan wrote the foreword to a new edition of one of her childhood favorites, Anne of Green Gables, published by Penguin Classics.

She graduated in 2003, then moved to New York City and began working at Allure. Sullivan later moved to The New York Times, where she worked for four years. Her writing has since appeared in The New York Times Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, the New York Observer, Men's Vogue, Elle, and Glamour, among many others.

Reese Witherspoon's production company picked up the rights to The Engagements before the book was even published. Fox 2000 signed on to make the film soon thereafter. The Engagements was a New York Times bestseller, and was named a best book of the year by People Magazine and the Irish Times. It has been published in 17 countries.

Julie Courtney Sullivan (born 1982), better known as J. Courtney Sullivan, is an American novelist and former writer for The New York Times.