Diane Saxton

As a journalist for Vanity Fair, Holiday Magazine, and Greenwich Review, Diane Saxton covered everything from torture victims to psychics, animal rights activists to the famous daughter of Hollywood royalty, exotic travel to movie producers. Carrie Fisher, Peter Benchley, Stephen Birmingham, and Ed Sherin were just a few of the personalities she captured using her keen eye and unabashed candor. She brings the same gift for storytelling with illuminating subtext to her first novel, PEREGRINE ISLAND, which explores the mystery behind an heirloom painting and what it reveals about the contradictory relationships within a troubled family.

A new chapter opened up for Saxton after interviewing Amnesty International U.S., founder Hannah Grunwald. Alarmed that the stories of such incredible and influential lives, such as Grunwald’s, could be lost as the Greatest Generation passes, Saxton began capturing their histories. Eventually, she compiled a prodigious biographical collection
of 1,000 pages, which became the inspiration for her next novel. This historical, multi-generational story spans half a century of familial conflict between self-fulfillment and altruism.

Saxton is deeply committed to supporting the arts, which in the past has included the Berkshire Theatre, the Mahaiwe Theatre, Barrington Stage, Close Encounters with Music, Community Access to the Arts, Shakespeare & Co., Tanglewood, and today includes the Writing Program at Hunter College and the 150th anniversary of The Mount, the home of Edith Wharton. She divides her time between New York City and the
Berkshires, where she lives with her husband, dogs and horses.