Marya Hornbacher - Biography

Biography

Marya Hornbacher was born in Walnut Creek, California and raised in Edina, Minnesota. She is the only child of Jay and Judy Hornbacher, professional theatre actors and directors; her mother worked as a school administrator before converting to theatre. She became bulimic at age nine and developed drug and alcohol problems by age thirteen. When Hornbacher was fifteen years old, she was accepted into the prestigious arts boarding school Interlochen where she developed anorexia.

The summer following her first year at Interlochen she was hospitalized for her eating disorder and then moved in with her father's ex-wife in Northern California. While there, she met her future husband, Julian Daniel Beard, but her eating disorder steadily worsened and she was re-hospitalized after Christmas. She was released in February but readmitted again after only two weeks. Eventually her parents sent her to Lowe House, a residential treatment hospital for adolescents with severe, long-term mental problems.

After her release that summer, she enrolled in the University of Minnesota and started writing for the university's student newspaper The Minnesota Daily. At the age of eighteen, despite her continued eating disorder, she signed out of treatment. In the fall of 1992, she entered college at American University in Washington D.C. Her eating disorder rapidly worsened and by the winter she had dropped to fifty-two pounds. On a visit home to her parents, she was admitted to the ER and given one week to live.

Though Hornbacher survived her ordeal, she has been left with many physical ailments as a result, including osteoporosis, a heart murmur, and infertility. Her second autobiography, Madness, also describes a near fatal incident of cutting but Hornbacher herself seems unclear about whether or not this was an intentional attempt at suicide.