When I was 12 years old, I read 'Nancy Drew' mysteries and biographies of Madame Curie and Florence Nightingale and books about girls who love horses or go to nursing school. I belonged to the Girl Scouts and got A's in school and rarely disobeyed my parents. I still kept a collection of Barbie dolls in my room, and I almost never spoke to boys.

In 1986 Joyce Maynard co-led the opposition to the construction of the nation’s first high-level nuclear waste dump in her home state of New Hampshire a campaign Joyce Maynard described in a New York Times cover story in April 1986. It was adapted into a 1995 film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman Matt Dillon Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck and directed by Gus Van Sant. Both The Usual Rules (2003) and The Cloud Chamber (2005) are young adult titles.

D. The 1998 publication of her memoir At Home in the World made her the object of intense criticism among some members of the literary world for having revealed the story of the relationship Joyce Maynard had with author J. Maynard is the mother of actor Wilson Bethel.