Gregory Maguire Biography
Gregory Maguire is the author of five novels for adults and more than a dozen
novels for children.
His adult novels, all published by HarperCollins, are Wicked: The Life and
Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995), praised by John Updike in the
New Yorker as "an amazing novel," Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
(1999); Lost (2001); Mirror Mirror (2003); and Son of a Witch, the sequel to Wicked, published in 2005.
Wicked has been developed as a big-budget Broadway musical, with music
and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin, The Prince of Egypt, etc.).
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister was filmed for ABC/Disney and aired
originally in the Spring of 2002. It starred Stockard Channing and Jonathan
Pryce.
Mr. Maguire's work for adults and for children has been published abroad in
England, Ireland and Australia, and various works have been purchased for
translation into French, German, Danish, Dutch, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and
Chinese.
His children's novels include The Hamlet Chronicles, a projected seven
book series including, to date, Seven Spiders Spinning, Six Haunted Hairdos,
Five Alien Elves, Four Stupid Cupids, and Three Rotten Eggs. A
Couple of April Fools is next. Though he is best known as a fantasy writer,
Mr. Maguire has also written picture books, science fiction, realistic and
historic fiction.
For the Sunday New York Times Book Review Mr. Maguire has published signal
reviews of significant fantasies by J. K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, and Maurice
Sendak. He has also contributed articles and essays in journals such as the
Boston Review, the Christian Science Monitor, The Horn Book Magazine, and
others.
Mr. Maguire has been the recipient of several awards and fellowships. He was
artist in residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and has
received fellowship residencies at Blue Mountain Center, New York; the Hambidge
Center, Georgia; The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; and the Bread Loaf
Writers Conference, Vermont. In addition to writing, Mr. Maguire is a national
figure in children's literature education. He was a professor and associate
director of the Center for the Study of Children's Literature at Simmons
College, 1979 through 1986. Since 1986 he has been codirector and founding board
member of Children's Literature New England, Incorporated, a nonprofit that
focuses attention on the significance of literature in the lives of children.
Mr. Maguire received his Ph.D. in English and American Literature at Tufts
University (1990). He has lived abroad in Dublin and London, and now makes his
home in Massachusetts.
This biography was last updated on 06/15/2011.
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