JoBeth McDaniel

Author and journalist JoBeth McDaniel began writing professionally at age 19, and hasn’t stopped since. Her work has appeared in magazines including LIFE, Islands, House Beautiful, Reader’s Digest, Veranda, Diversion, Travel & Leisure and Working Woman, where she was a columnist for four years. She is currently revising her novel about a small-town newspaper editor and his daughter, set in 1960s Alabama.

JoBeth started her career in Atlanta, where she wrote regularly for Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Advertising Age and USA Today, and served as LIFE magazine’s Southeast correspondent. Later, she moved to Southern California and helped run LIFE’s Los Angeles bureau. She reported and wrote many stories for LIFE during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and again for its weekly incarnation in 2007-2008.

JoBeth’s essays have been selected for several anthologies, including Voyages and The Gift of Travel: The Best of Travelers Tales. Many of her stories and essays have been reprinted in Great Britain, Brazil, South Africa and Australia. Her work has also been published in two college textbooks.

JoBeth is the author of the bestselling biography, A Special Kind of Hero (Doubleday, Dell), a Literary Guild selection and Best Book of the Year selection by Library Journal.

JoBeth is an Alabama native who earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Auburn University. She is the past president of American Society of Journalists and Authors’ Southern California chapter, and also an active member of PEN/​West and Authors Guild.