He was a professor and co-director at the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature from 1979 to 1986. Around the same time, he began to realize he was gay. In 1978, at the age of 25, Maguire published his first novel, The Lightning Time. His doctoral thesis was on children's fantasy written from 1938 to 1989.

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. Maguire has three half-siblings from his father's second marriage. He was reclaimed from the orphanage at age two, after his father's remarriage. His aunt relinquished him to a local orphanage when he was six months old. His mother died from complications suffered giving birth to him, which prompted his father to send him to live with an aunt. Biography īorn and raised in Albany, New York, Gregory Maguire is the youngest of four children born to Helen and John Maguire. Maguire is married to American painter Andy Newman, in one of the first same-sex marriages performed in the state of Massachusetts.

Though unsuccessful at first, it was adapted into a popular Broadway musical in 2003. Wicked, published in 1995, was his first novel for adults. Maguire published his first novel, The Lightning Time, in 1978. Many of Maguire's adult novels are inspired by classic children's stories. He is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and several dozen other novels for adults and children. Gregory Maguire (born June 9, 1954) is an American novelist.

Gregory maguire new book