Nicholas Sparks was born in Omaha, NE in the last few hours of 1965. As a
child, he lived in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and Grand Island, NE, finally
settling in Fair Oaks, CA at the age of eight. His father was a professor, his
mother an optometrist's assistant. He lived in Fair Oaks through high school,
graduated valedictorian in 1984, and received a full track scholarship to the
University of Notre Dame.
After breaking the Notre Dame school record as part of a relay team in 1985 as
a freshman (a record which still stands), he was injured and spent the summer
recovering. During that summer, he wrote his first novel, though it was never
published. He majored in Business Finance and graduated with high honors in
1988.
He and his wife Catherine, whom he met on spring break in 1988, were married in
July 1989. While living in Sacramento, he wrote his second novel later that
year, though again it wasn't published. He worked at a variety of jobs over the
next three years, including real estate appraisal, waiting tables, selling
dental products by phone and started his own small manufacturing business which
struggled from the beginning. In 1990, he collaborated on a book with Billy
Mills, the Olympic gold medallist, and it was published by Feather Publishing
before later being picked up by Random House. Though it received scant
publicity, sales topped 50,000 copies in the first year of release.
He began selling pharmaceuticals and moved from Sacramento, CA to North
Carolina in 1992. In 1994, at the age of 28, he wrote The Notebook over a
period of six months. In October 1995, rights to The Notebook were sold to
Warner Books. It was published in October 1996, and he followed that with
Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999), The Rescue (2000), A
Bend in the Road (2001), Nights in Rodanthe (2002) and The Guardian (2003), all
published by Warner Books. All were domestic and international best sellers and
have been translated into more than 35 languages. The movie version of Message
in a Bottle was released in 1999 and A Walk to Remember was released in January
2002.
The film version for The Notebook will be released in 2004 and film rights to A
Bend in the Road and Nights in Rodanthe have been sold as well. The Rescue is
being adapted into a television series, with Nicholas Sparks serving as one of
the executive producers.
Nicholas continues to live in North Carolina with his wife and five children.
He is an avid athlete who runs daily, lifts weights regularly, and competes in
Tae Kwon Do. He attends church regularly and reads about 125 books a year. He
contributes to a variety of local and national charities and is a major
contributor to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre
Dame, where he provides scholarships, internships and an annual fellowship.
