Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire is an author best known for his adult novels such as Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister but he has also written 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 into the sympathetic protagonist Elphaba. Wicked was turned into a hit Broadway musical of the same name. He received his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Tufts University, and his B.A. from the State University of New York at Albany. He was a professor and co-director at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children’s Literature from 1979-1985. In 1987 he co-founded Children’s Literature New England. Gregory Maguire 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 in America.