Born in Toronto, Ontario, she graduated from the University of Toronto in 1966,
with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. As Joy Tepperman, she had a
brief acting career, appearing in the film Winter Kept Us Warm (1965) and in an
episode of Gunsmoke. She later changed her last name to Fielding (after Henry
Fielding) and began writing novels.
Fielding is also the screenwriter of the television film Golden Will: The
Silken Laumann Story.

At the age of 8, Joy Tepperman wrote her first story and sent it into a local
magazine, and at age 12 sent in her first TV script, however both were
rejected. She had a brief acting career, eventually giving it up to write
full-time in 1972. She has published to date 22 novels, two of which were
converted into film. Fielding’s process of having an idea to the point the
novel is finished generally takes a year, the writing itself taking four to
eight months. Joy Fielding sets most of her novels in American cities such as
Boston and Chicago. She has said that she prefers to set her novels in
“big American cities, [as the] landscape seems best for [her] themes of
urban alienation and loss of identity. Fielding is a Canadian citizen. Her
husband’s name is Warren, and they have two daughters, Annie and Shannon. They
have property in Toronto, Ontario, as well as Palm Beach, Florida.

Fielding had an interview with the Vancouver Sun in 2007, just after her
publication of Heartstopper. She enjoys catching readers off guard with the
endings of her stories, but insists that “[it] isn’t what her fiction is
about”, but rather more about the development of her characters. Discussing
her novels with the Toronto Star in 2008, she said “I might not write
fiction in the literary sense. But I write very well. My characters are good.
My dialog is good. And my stories are really involving. I’m writing exactly the
kind of books I like to write. And they’re the kind of books I like to read.
They’re popular commercial fiction. That’s what they are.”