Biography
Delinsky was born on August 9, 1945, near Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother died when she was only eight.
In 1963, she graduated from Newton High School, in Newton, Massachusetts. She then went on to earn a B.A. in Psychology from Tufts University and an M.A. in Sociology at Boston College.
Delinsky married Steve Delinsky, a law student, when she was very young. During the first years of her marriage, she worked for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. After the birth of her first child, she took a job as a photographer and reporter for the Belmont Herald newspaper. She also filled her time doing volunteer work at hospitals, and serving on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and their Women's Cancer Advisory Board.
In 1980, after having twins, Delinsky read an article about three female writers, and decided to try putting her imagination on paper. After three months of researching, plotting, and writing, she sold her first book. She began publishing for Dell Publishing Company (Candlelight Ecstasy Romance) as Billie Douglass, for Silhouette Books (S. Intimate Moments and S. Desire) as Billie Douglass, and for Harlequin Enterprises as Barbara Delinsky. Now, she only uses her married name Barbara Delinsky, and some of her novels published under the other pseudonyms, are being published under this name. Since then, over 30 million copies of her books are in print, and they have been published in 25 languages. One of her novels, A Woman's Place, was made into a Lifetime movie starring Lorraine Bracco.
In 2001, Delinsky branched out into nonfiction with the book Uplift: Secrets from the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors. A breast cancer survivor herself, Barbara donates the proceeds of that book and her second nonfiction work to charity. With those funds she has been able to fund an oncology fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital that trains breast surgeons.
The Delinsky family resides in Newton, Massachusetts. Steve Delinsky has become a reputed lawyer of the city, while she writes daily in her office above the garage at her home.
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