Judith Guest (March 29, 1936) is an American novelist and screenwriter. Born in Detroit, Michigan, she is the great-niece of Poet Laureate Edgar Guest (1881–1959).
"I am also working on a couple of short stories for anthologies. This is new to me and I'm enjoying it.""I can write for a long time on one novel and not get tired.""I notice when I'm on these trips, I read like mad. It's the only thing that seems to center me, bring me back to remembering who I am. Or forgetting who I am!""I think living the blessed life is the luck of the draw.""I'm glad I'm successful at it, because it's allowed me to live very well financially, and give my kids a lot of things. It's enabled me to do stuff that I otherwise wouldn't be able to do. But it's not who I am.""I've never been one to tear the social fabric.""It's always obvious to me when someone is looking at me with an idea of who I am and hoping that that's the person I'm going to be. No matter how subtle it is, it's there, and you want to give them who they really want. But it ain't me.""It's true that every day away from work requires two more days to get back into it.""Ours was not a political household, when I was growing up.""People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.""Some people with awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies they're handed, and that seems courageous to me.""Sometimes you are being interviewed by someone and you think, if I knew this person they'd be my best friend. Other times you're being interviewed by a complete jerk.""With my friends, I don't feel pressure to be someone other than who I am."
Judith's first book, Ordinary People, published in 1976, was made into a 1980 film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture.This novel and two others, Second Heaven (1982) and Errands (1997), are about adolescent children forced to deal with a crisis in their family. She also wrote the screenplay for the 1987 film Rachel River.
Judith Guest co-authored the mystery Killing Time in St. Cloud (1988) with fellow novelist Rebecca Hill. Guest's most recent book, The Tarnished Eye (2004), is loosely based on a true unsolved crime in her native Michigan.
Judith attended Detroit's Mumford High School in 1951; when the Guest family moved to Royal Oak, Judith transferred to Dondero High School - where she graduated in 1954. Guest then studied English and psychology at the University of Michigan, graduating with a BA in education. She taught at a public school for a number of years before making the decision to devote herself full time to completing a novel.
Judith is married to businessman Larry LaVercombe; former All-City basketball player at Detroit's Cooley High School and graduate of the University of Michigan. Judith and Larry have three sons and several grandchildren; all residing in Minnesota.