“I wrote three novels in six months, with a clarity of focus and attention to detail that I had never before experienced. This type of sublime creative energy is characteristic of the elevated and productive mood state known as hypomania.”

Israeli-American novelist and essayist

Ayelet Waldman is an Israeli-American novelist and essayist known for her mystery fiction and personal writing. She wrote The Mommy-Track Mysteries, a seven-book mystery series, along with four other novels. Waldman also wrote autobiographical essays about motherhood. She spent three years as a federal public defender, and that experience often informs her fiction, especially the legal and everyday pressures that shape her characters.