Beth Gutcheon is a best selling American author having written nine novels and two quilting books. A graduate of Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, Gutcheon went on to study at Harvard University, earning a Bachelor of Arts with honors in English. It was while at Harvard that she met Jeffrey Gutcheon whom she married in 1968 and divorced in 1985. In 1973 Gutcheon published her first book, The Perfect Patchwork Primer; two years later came its sequel, The Quilt Design Workbook, written with then-husband, Jeffrey Gutcheon. Both works are considered classics in their field. In 1978, Gutcheon wrote the narration for a feature-length documentary about the Kirov ballet school in St. Petersburg, Russia called The Children of Theatre Street, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Other screenplays include The Good Fight for Lifetime TV. Gutcheon's first novel, The New Girls, was published in 1979. The novel drew loosely upon the author's own experience of the cruel and rarified atmosphere of elite boarding schools, and was well received by critics.