Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire
Born	(1954-06-09) June 9, 1954 Albany, New York
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Genre	Fantasy, Children's literature
Spouse	Andy Newman
Website
http://www.gregorymaguire.com/home.html

Gregory Maguire (born June 9, 1954) is an American novelist. He is the author of the novels Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and many other novels for adults and children. Many of Maguire's adult novels are revisionist retellings of classic children's stories: for example, in Wicked he transformed the Wicked Witch of the West from L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaption into the misunderstood protagonist Elphaba. Wicked was turned into a successful Broadway musical of the same name. One of Maguire's short stories is featured in the 2004 compilation Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales.

Biography

Maguire was born in Albany, New York. He received his BA from the State University of New York at Albany and his PhD in English and American Literature from Tufts University. He wrote his doctoral thesis on children's fantasy from 1933 to 1989. He was a professor and co-director at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature from 1979 to 1985. In 1987, Maguire co-founded Children's Literature New England and he continues to serve as its co-director. He is also a board member of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance a national not-for-profit that actively advocates for literacy, literature, and libraries.

While visiting an art exhibit one day, Gregory Maguire says he stumbled across a painting of, “a person of great compassion circling and enfolding someone who needed help.” He fell in love with the painting, and when he met Andy Newman two weeks later, he fell in love with the artist. Afterwards, Maguire got married in 2004 to his partner, Andy Newman. Their wedding took place just after same-sex marriage was legalized in Massachusetts. Not long afterwards, they adopted three children: Luke and Alex from Cambodia and Helen from Guatemala.

One reason why Gregory in particular felt incline to adopt, other than the fact that he could not biologically have children with his partner, was because of his challenging childhood. Maguire’s mother died in childbirth, and his husband Andy’s mother died about ten years ago. This background of familial stress made Andy and Gregory want to provide a stable home environment for their children. Some people have spoken out, saying that they believe a household with two dads could potentially cause the same kind of negative stress on a family that living in a single-parent household does. Maguire disagrees. He says that his family operates like any other. He and Newman do all the things that a father and a mother would be traditionally expected to do, from packing school lunches to tucking them in to bed at night. This doesn’t mean that they do not acknowledge that their situation is a unique one. Gregory says that he and Andy encourage family discussions about their situation every now and then. He reminds them that it is okay to talk about being adopted children being raised by two dads. The children love their fathers and say that being adopted children to a homosexual couple is completely normal.

Maguire did a good deal of traveling during his life, from living in London to Dublin to Massachusetts. While he was living in London, he found inspiration to write his most well-known book, Wicked. Maguire had seen and heard so much about Hitler and about young crime in the London area, and it inspired him to reflect on the nature of crime and of evil. This encouraged him to think about one of the iconic evil characters, the Wicked Witch of the West.

Bibliography

For children

• The Lightning Time (1978)
• The Daughter of the Moon (1980)
• Lights on the Lake (1981)
• The Dream Stealer (1983)
• I Feel like the Morning Star (1989)
• Lucas Fishbone (1990)
• Missing Sisters (1994)
• "The Honorary Shepherds", in Am I Blue?: Coming Out From the Silence
• Oasis (1996)
• The Good Liar (1997)
• "Beyond the Fringe", in A Glory of Unicornz
• Crabby Cratchitt (2000)
• Leaping Beauty: And Other Animal Fairy Tales (2004)
• Hamlet Chronicles
  • Seven Spiders Spinning
  • Six Haunted Hairdos (1999)
  • Five Alien Elves (1995)
  • Four Stupid Cupids (2000)
  • Three Rotten Eggs (2002)
  • A Couple of April Fools (2004)
  • One Final Firecracker (2005)
• What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy (2007)
• Missing Sisters (2009)

For adults

• The Wicked Years
  • Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995)
  • Son of a Witch (2005)
  • A Lion Among Men (2008)
  • Out of Oz (2011)
• Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister (1999)
• Lost (2001)
• Mirror, Mirror (2003)
• The Next Queen of Heaven (2010)

Short stories

• Scarecrow (2001), published in Half-Human edited by Bruce Coville (Note: This is the life story of the Scarecrow from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but is not a part of The Wicked Years.)
• Fee, Fie, Foe et Cetera (2002), published in The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest
• The Oakthing (2004), published in The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm
• Chatterbox, published in I Believe in Water: Twelve Brushes With Religion
• The Honorary Shepherds (1994), published in Am I Blue?:Coming Out From The Silence
• Beyond the Fringe (1998) published in A Glory of Unicorns
• The Seven Stage a Comeback (2000) published in A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales
• Matchless: A Christmas Story (2009)
• The Silk Road Runs Through Tupperneck, N.H. (2009), published in How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity
• In That Country (2012), published in Parnassus Literary Arts Magazine

Non-fiction

• Making Mischief: A Maurice Sendak Appreciation (2009)

External links

• Gregory Maguire official website
• NCBLA Gregory Maguire bio
• NCBLA Gregory Maguire interview
• Official publisher web page
• Gregory Maguire at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• "American Fairy Tales" A Conversation with Gregory Maguire