GREGORY MAGUIRE, born on this date, 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.

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.

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 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.