Alice Hoffman (born March 16, 1952) is an American novelist and young-adult and children's writer, best known for her 1995 novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film of the same name. Many of her works fall into the genre of magic realism and contain elements of magic, irony, and non-standard romances and relationships.
Alice Hoffman was born in New York City and raised on Long Island, New York. Her grandmother was a Russian-Jewish immigrant. She graduated from high school in 1969, and then from Adelphi University with a Bachelor of Arts. She was a Mirrielees Fellow at the Stanford University Creative Writing Center in 1973 and 1974, where she earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing.
When Hoffman was twenty-one and studying at Stanford, her first short story, At The Drive-In, was published in Volume 3 of the literary magazine Fiction. Editor Ted Solotaroff contacted her, and asked whether she had a novel. At that point, she began writing her first novel, Property Of. It was published in 1977, by Farrar Straus and Giroux, now a division of Macmillan Publishers. A section of Property Of was published in Solotaroff's literary magazine, American Review.
Hoffman's first job was at Doubleday, which later published two of her novels.
She was the recipient of a New Jersey Notable Book Award. She won a Hammett Prize for Turtle Moon. She wrote the screenplay for the 1983 film Independence Day, starring Kathleen Quinlan and Dianne Wiest.
She resides in Boston. After being treated for breast cancer at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, she helped establish the hospital's Hoffman Breast Center. Hoffman is Jewish.
Bibliography, Novels:
- Property Of (1977) - The Drowning Season (1979) - Angel Landing (1980) - White Horses (1982) - Fortune's Daughter (1985) - Illumination Night (1987) - At Risk (1988) - Seventh Heaven (1990) - Turtle Moon (1992) - Second Nature (1994) - Practical Magic (1995) - Here on Earth (1997) - Local Girls (1999) - The River King (2000) - Blue Diary (2001) - The Probable Future (2003) - Blackbird House (2004) - The Ice Queen (2005) - Skylight Confessions (2007) - The Third Angel (2008) - The Story Sisters (2009) - The Red Garden (2011) - The Dovekeepers (2011) - The Museum of Extraordinary Things (2014) - The Marriage of Opposites (2015) - Faithful (2016) - The Rules of Magic (2017) - Practical Magic Prequel - Young adult novels[edit] - Aquamarine (2001) - Indigo (2002) - Green Angel (2003) - Water Tales: Aquamarine & Indigo (omnibus edition) (2003) - The Foretelling (2005) - Incantation (2006) - Green Witch (2010) - Green Heart (2012)
Bibliography, Middle grade books:
- Nightbird (2015)
Bibliography, Children's books:
- Fireflies: A Winter's Tale (illustrated by Wayne McLoughlin) (1999) - Horsefly (paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher) (2000) - Moondog (with Wolfe Martin; illustrated by Yumi Heo) (2004)
