Jean M. Auel

Jean Marie Auel
Jean Auel at the Miami Book Fair of 1990
Born	Jean Marie Untinen February 18, 1936 (1936-02-18) Chicago, Illinois, USA
Pen name	Jean M. Auel Jean M. Untinen-Auel (Finland)
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Portland (MBA '76)
Period	1980-present
Genres	Pre-historical fiction
Notable work(s)	Earth's Children series
Spouse(s)	Ray Bernard Auel
Children	5

Jean Marie Auel ( /ˈdʒiːn məˈriː ˈaʊl/; born February 18, 1936) is an American writer. She is best known for her Earth's Children books, a series of novels set in prehistoric Europe that explores interactions of Cro-Magnon people with Neanderthals. As of 2010 her books have sold over 45 million copies worldwide.

Early years

Born Jean Marie Untinen on February 18, 1936 in Chicago, Illinois, she is of Finnish descent, the second of five children of Neil Solomon Untinen, a housepainter, and Martha Wirtanen.

Auel attended Portland State University.^{[citation needed]} While a student, she joined Mensa, and worked at Tektronix, as a clerk (1965–66), a circuit board designer (1966–73), technical writer (1973–74), and a credit manager (1974–76).^{[citation needed]} At one time, she shared a secretary with the author Ursula K. Le Guin.^{[citation needed]} Auel earned a master of business administration from the University of Portland in 1976. She has also been awarded honorary degrees from her alma mater, as well as the University of Maine and the Mount Vernon College for Women.^{[citation needed]}

Career as novelist

In 1977, Auel began extensive library research of the Ice Age for her first book. She joined a survival class to learn how to construct an ice cave, and learned primitive methods of making fire, tanning leather, and knapping stone from the aboriginal skills expert Jim Riggs.

The Clan of the Cave Bear was nominated for numerous literary awards, including an American Booksellers Association nomination for best first novel. It was also later adapted into a screenplay for the film of the same name.

After the sales success of her first book, Auel has been able to travel to the sites of prehistoric ruins and relics, and also to meet many of the experts with whom she had been corresponding. Her research has taken her across Europe from France to Ukraine, including most of what Marija Gimbutas called Old Europe. In 1986 she attended and co-sponsored a conference on modern human origins at the School of American Research, Santa Fe. She has developed a close friendship with Dr. Jean Clottes of France who was responsible for, among many other things, the exploration of the Cosquer Cave discovered in 1985 and the Chauvet Cave discovered in 1994.

In October 2008, Auel was named an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture and Communication.

Bibliography

By 1990, Auel's first three books in her Earth's Children series sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and had been translated into 18 languages; Crown Publishers has reportedly paid Auel about $25 million for the rights to publish The Plains of Passage and the two subsequent volumes. By May 2002, on the cusp of the publication of the fifth book, the series had sold 34 million books. The sixth and final book in the series, The Land of Painted Caves, was published in 2011.

1. The Clan of the Cave Bear, 1980
2. The Valley of Horses, 1982
3. The Mammoth Hunters, 1985
4. The Plains of Passage, 1990
5. The Shelters of Stone, 2002
6. The Land of Painted Caves, 2011

Personal life

Auel married Ray Bernard Auel after high school. They are the parents of five children, and live in Portland, Oregon.

External links

• Official web site
• Jean M. Auel at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Works by or about Jean M. Auel in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Interview With Jean M. Auel by Meredith Allard in The Copperfield Review
• Audio(mp3, ram) Interview With Jean M. Auel by Don Swaim, December 2, 1985, New York.
• Transcript of Interview about Jean M. Auel's New Book, The Land of Painted Caves by Horus Cope, March 27, 2011, California.