Ask anyone in the family and they'll tell you Jax has been a storyteller since kindergarten. As a thirteen-year old, full of raging hormones and adolescent angst, she began to experiment with fiction and once wrote so vividly in her diary of her imaginary friendship with a member of a motorcycle gang, her parents grounded her for a month, refusing to believe she made it up. Despite this early setback, she has kept a journal all her life. A diagnosis of celiac disease came much later, in 1981, after years of perplexing and often debilitating symptoms.

Prior to writing books full-time, and after discovering singing with a rock and roll band was not in the cards, Lowell was Executive Creative Director and held a seat on the board of the international advertising agency, Foote, Cone & Belding. She was named one of the 100 Best and Brightest Women in Advertising by AD AGE Magazine and has been a recipient of the CLIO and the International Film Festival Gold Medal, among other prestigious awards. During this period, she carried rice crackers and gluten-free cookies to meetings, television shoots and client lunches, developing the slightly eccentric and assertive behavior, which led to her now classic, celiac best seller, Against The Grain, published by Henry Holt in l995.

The following year, Jax's first novel, Mothers (St. Martin's Press) made its debut. The subject of much critical praise, Mothers was a Barnes & Noble Discover Book, a featured selection of the Association of University Women Book Club and was the subject of a screenplay by Ann Meredith for Paramount Pictures. The Authors Guild has just reissued a new edition of this moving and powerful novel that explores the bonds of love and challenges our definitions of family.

In addition to her newest celiac offerings – The Gluten-Free Bible (Henry Holt, 2005) and an illustrated children's book, No More Cupcakes & Tummy Aches (Xlibris, 2005), Jax is a frequent contributor to Living Without Magazine and keeps her advertising skills honed by writing promotional trailers, posters and positioning copy for various film companies, among them Miramax, Universal and Focus Features. She has been known to toss off a quick headline for a friend in a jam. Her newest novel, Dead Low, is in the works, as is a collection of short fiction.

Whether reading her fiction or discussing the gluten-free life, an appealing mixture of humor and compassion has made Jax a popular speaker. A native New Yorker, she has lived in Philadelphia for many years, currently in a restored bread factory, with her husband John, and a lifetime supply of gluten-free English muffins.

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