Maria Semple is an American novelist and television screenwriter best known for the bestselling novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette, which was adapted into a 2019 film starring Cate Blanchett. Before becoming a novelist, she spent more than 15 years writing for television, with credits including Arrested Development, Mad About You, Ellen, and Saturday Night Live. The daughter of screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., she graduated from Barnard College and has published four novels: This One Is Mine, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Today Will Be Different, and Go Gentle, an Oprah’s Book Club selection. She lives in New York with her longtime partner, writer and producer George Meyer, and their daughter.