Joyce Maynard is a highly accomplished New York Times bestselling author with a career spanning several decades. Her impressive body of work includes hundreds of essays and eighteen books, encompassing both fiction and non-fiction.
Her latest work, The Bird Hotel, is slated for release in May 2023 and marks her 11th novel to-date. This release will also coincide with the 50th anniversary of her debut book, which was published in 1973.
About The Bird Hotel:
Enter the magical world of La Llorona with New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard.
After a childhood filled with heartbreak, Irene, a talented artist, finds herself in a small Central American village where she checks into a beautiful but decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona at the base of a volcano.
The Bird Hotel tells the story of this young American who, after suffering tragedy, restores and runs La Llorona. Along the way we meet a rich assortment of characters who live in the village or come to stay at the hotel. With a mystery at its center and filled with warmth, drama, romance, humor, pop culture, and a little magic realism, The Bird Hotel has all the hallmarks of a Joyce Maynard novel that have made her a leading voice of her generation.
The Bird Hotel is a big, sweeping story spanning four decades, offering lyricism as well as whimsy. While the world that New York Times bestselling author Joyce Maynard brings to life on the page is rendered from her imagination, it’s one informed by the more than twenty years of which she has spent a significant amount of her time in a small Mayan indigenous village in Guatemala.
About the Author:
Joyce Maynard is a New York Times bestselling author with a remarkable fifty-year career that includes hundreds of essays and eighteen books, spanning both fiction and non-fiction genres, including the memoir At Home in the World, and the novels To Die For and Labor Day, both adapted for film. Her most recent novel, Count the Ways, received the prestigious Grand Prix Literaire award in France.
For over two decades, Maynard has owned Casa Paloma, a home in a small indigenous village on the shores of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Every winter, she leads writing workshops and retreats at her hotel, where she also wrote and finished four of her novels, including The Bird Hotel.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, with tourism completely shut down in the local village, Maynard embarked on a series of building projects to provide jobs for the people of her community. These projects ultimately resulted in the construction of numerous small guest houses, a yoga platform, and commissioned artworks, including a painting of a volcanic eruption that serves as the cover for The Bird Hotel.
The success of these projects inspired Maynard to not only write a novel about a hotel, but to officially open Casa Paloma Retreat, which can now house as many as 18 guests and operates as a year-round premier retreat center on Lake Atitlan.
In addition to hosting numerous retreats at Casa Paloma herself for non-writers as well as writers, the property also hosts a range of yoga and meditation retreats, all of which employ a team of indigenous staff from the local community, including the hotel’s resident chef.
While writing novels and memoirs remains her central passion, Maynard is actively involved in every aspect of Casa Paloma’s design and operation, from arranging local tours and meeting with builders to leading hikes and supervising the construction of her newest casita, Casa Cristal, and Casa Una, named after one of her granddaughters.
