Heather Maclean (author)

Maclean's first fiction title "Toward a Secret Sky," a YA adventure set in Scotland, will be released by HarperCollins' Blink imprint in April 2017.

Maclean starred with Richard Branson on the television show The Rebel Billionaire, an Apprentice-meets-Amazing Race reality program broadcast on the Fox network in 2005. Maclean was one of the final contestants and appeared in every episode. Maclean also filmed the pilot episode for MTV's Road Rules with Mark Long and Shani Rosenzweig.

In 2001, Maclean founded Little Laureate, a children’s educational media production company. Little Laureate’s DVDs were named one of the “Best Video Series of All Time” by Parents magazine.

Maclean was first published under the name Heather Michelle Beach in 1990 when an award-winning speech she wrote for the Voice of Democracy broadcast scriptwriting contest, sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, was entered into the United States Congressional Record by Congressman Richard A. Gephardt.

Maclean was born Heather Beach on October 18, 1972 in St. Louis, Missouri. She graduated from Cor Jesu Academy in St. Louis in 1990. In 1994, she graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature.

At Princeton, she was the Publisher of Business Today, the largest student-run magazine in the world, founded by Steve Forbes in 1968. While in college, she was an intern at Entertainment Weekly magazine.