Gregory Maguire (Jun 9, 1954)

Biography

Gregory Maguire (born June 9, 1954) is an American novelist. He is the author of Wicked, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and several dozen other novels for adults and children. Many of Maguire's adult novels are inspired by classic children's stories. Maguire published his first novel, The Lightning Time, in 1978. Wicked, published in 1995, was his first novel for adults. It was adapted into a popular Broadway musical in 2003. Maguire is married to American painter Andy Newman, in one of the first same-sex marriages performed in the state of Massachusetts. They have three children. Born and raised in Albany, New York, Gregory Maguire is the youngest of four children born to Helen and John Maguire. His mother died from complications suffered giving birth to him, which prompted his father to send him to live with an aunt. His aunt relinquished him to a local orphanage when he was six months old. He was reclaimed from the orphanage at age two, after his father's remarriage. Maguire has three half-siblings from his father's second marriage. Schooled in Catholic institutions through high school, he received a BA in English and art from the State University of New York at Albany, an MA in children's literature from Simmons College, and a PhD in English and American literature from Tufts University. His doctoral thesis was on children's fantasy written from 1938 to 1989. In 1978, at the age of 25, Maguire published his first novel, The Lightning Time. Around the same time, he began to realize he was gay. He was a professor and co-director at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature from 1979 to 1986. In 1987, Maguire co-founded a nonprofit educational charity, Children's Literature New England, Inc., and was co-director for twenty-five years. He has lived in Dublin, London, and the greater Boston area. In 1995, Maguire published his first adult novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Though the novel was initially unsuccessful, it sold 500,000 copies by the time the Broadway adaptation opened in 2003. In 2005, ten years after its publication, Wicked spent 26 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Maguire met American painter Andy Newman in 1997 at the Blue Mountain Center art colony. Within a month of meeting, they had fallen in love. They adopted three children: Luke and Alex, originally from Cambodia, and Helen, originally from Guatemala. Maguire and Newman were married in June 2004, shortly after same-sex marriage became possible in Massachusetts.They have lived in Concord, Massachusetts, since 1999. On April 13, 2009, Maguire and his family were featured on Oprah. Description above from the Wikipedia article Gregory Maguire, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.