Background

Jan Marino was born on September 23, 1931, in East Boston, Massachusetts, United States. She is the daughter of Ernest D. and Helen (Brown) Rejo.

Education

Jan Marino attended the Katherine Gibbs School in Boston. Later she attended Hofstra University and the New School for Social Research in New York City. Marino also won scholarship grants to the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference at Bennington College and other workshops.

Career

Jan Marino started her career as a client coordinator at an investment counseling firm in 1972. She started to write poems and stories after her brother's death. In 1985, she left her post of client coordinator and devoted her time to writing. Her first book Eighty-Eight Steps to September was published in 1989.

Later Marino wrote such books as The Day That Elvis Came to Town, Like Some Kind of Hero, For the Love of Pete and The Mona Lisa of Salem Street. She also worked as an instructor in writing, Long Island University, C. W. Post College, and Southampton College. She was a participant in writing workshops at Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, Bennington College, and Long Island University. Marino was a contributor to the New York Times and Boston Globe.

Achievements

• Jan Marino was an American writer and educator who was famous for her young-adult novels. Her famous books are Eighty-Eight Steps to September and The Mona Lisa of Salem Street. In 1992, she received the Alabama Reading Incentive Award. There exist the Jan Marino Scholarship designed to support women over 55 who are students in the Stephens College M.F.A. in Television and Screenwriting program.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Searching For Atticus

    (When her estranged surgeon father returns from Vietnam, T...)

    1997
  • For the Love of Pete

    (When her doting grandmother is moved into a nursing home,...)

    1993
  • The Day That Elvis Came to Town

    (Wanda feels betrayed when her parents' glamorous boarder ...)

    1991
  • The Mona Lisa of Salem Street

    (Nettie and John Peter, tired of haphazard caretaking sinc...)

    1995
  • Eighty-Eight Steps to September

    (Ten-year-old Amy's happy life changes when she learns her...)

    1989
  • Like Some Kind of Hero 1992

Views

Quotations: "I love to write. To read. I’ve gone through much of my father’s set of the Harvard Classics, but none pleases me as much as Volume 17. I love to imagine. To create characters. Yes, there are days of frustration. Days when I stare at the lifeless computer screen. Days when my characters refuse to talk to me. But give up? Never. I cajole. I plead and beg until I hear their voices. And when my computer screen finally comes alive, I am beyond happy."

Membership

Jan Marino was a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and the Authors Guild.

Personality

Jan Marino was a vibrant and witty woman. She was fiercely loyal and a champion for those she loved. Marino was truly a beautiful person inside and out.

Connections

Jan Marino married Leonard Marino in 1952. The marriage produced three children.

Father:

Ernest D. Rejo

Mother:

Helen Brown

husband:

Leonard Marino

Son:

Leonard E. Marino

Son:

Christopher J. Marino

Daughter:

Betsy E. Marino

References

• Children's Books and Their Creators Featuring seventy-five autobiographical vignettes by such authors as Eric Carle, Beverly Cleary, Lois Lowry, and Maurice Sendak, a reference offers more than eight hundred short articles covering every aspect of children's books, their themes, and their creators.
  1995