Nora Johnson was born in Hollywood, California, in 1933, the daughter of director/writer/producer Nunnally Johnson. Her parents divorced when she was a child, and she moved to New York City with her mother. She went to prep school and college in the East and spent summers in Beverly Hills. She has been a writer all her life; in 1958 her first novel, The World of Henry Orient, was a great success, and was subsequently made into a film starring Peter Sellers and Angela Lansbury, and a Broadway musical called Henry Sweet Henry. She has written novels and nonfiction books, as well as short fiction, articles, and essays for various periodicals, such as The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, McCall's, The New York Times Book Review, and the Los Angeles Times. She's been married twice, has three children, and has lived in Saudi Arabia, Larchmont (NY), and New York City, where she currently resides.