Maggie Stiefvater


Margaret Stiefvater is an American writer of Young Adult fiction, known mainly for her series of fantasy novels The Wolves of Mercy Falls and The Raven Cycle. She currently lives in Virginia.

Life and career

Early life

Stiefvater was born in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She described herself as an "anxious child with many phobias." As a child, she wanted to be a fighter pilot and race-car driver and was a voracious reader who enjoyed writing. By age 16, she was submitting manuscripts to publishers. After being home-schooled from sixth grade on, Stiefvater attended Mary Washington College, graduating with a B.A. in history. By the time she had entered college, she had already written over 30 novels, including four thrillers about the Irish Republican Army, a historical blockade runner novel, and a high-fantasy novel about "impassioned enchanters fighting among civil unrest." At 16, she legally changed her first name from Heidi to Margaret. Her maiden name was Hummel. After graduating, she worked as a portrait artist, specializing in equestrian art. In 2010, she gave a TEDx Talk for NASA entitled "How Bad Teens Become Famous People", in which she reflects on her youth as a "Bad Teen" and how those years have impacted her.

Writing career

Stiefvater published her first novel, Lament, in 2008. Before Lament had been released, she sold the rights to Ballad, the sequel to Lament, and to Shiver, the first book in the trilogy The Wolves of Mercy Falls. Shiver spent more than 40 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. There are over 1.7 million copies of The Wolves of Mercy Falls series in print and more than thirty-six foreign editions have been licensed.
In 2011, Stiefvater published The Scorpio Races, which received 5 starred reviews and was named a Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book.
Stiefvater has been very open about sharing her techniques and methods when writing. She has a series of blog posts entitled "" describing her different approaches and sharing advice. In 2018 and 2019, Maggie Stiefvater gave writing seminars entitled Portraits & Dreams: Writing with Maggie Stiefvater. It included a lecture and a Q&A. She gave this lecture in Edinburgh, New York City, Seattle, Austin, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Music

Stiefvater plays various musical instruments. She recorded original compositions for the audio books of The Scorpio Races and The Raven Cycle. She has a SoundCloud account where she releases her original tracks. Stiefvater is very connected to music and has released playlists for some of her novels of songs she listened to while writing.

Art

Before turning to writing full-time, Stiefvater was a professional portrait artist, specializing in colored pencil. She currently has her own Etsy page and Society6 page where she sells her original art.
Stiefvater also created a Tarot card deck, The Raven's Prophecy Tarot Cards in September of 2015.
She was asked to create a poster for the American Library Association to promote reading. The poster includes characters from The Raven Cycle and the phrase "The future belongs to those who read."

Cars

Stiefvater greatly enjoys cars, especially fast ones. She has completed a stunt driving class. She has worked as an automotive journalist.
Stiefvater has frequently used her passion for vehicles to promote her novels. To promote the second book of The Raven Cycle, The Dream Thieves, Stiefvater spray-painted her own car. She later allowed fans to also spray-paint the vehicle at the book's launch in Kansas City on September 18th, 2013. She repeated this for another event in October of 2016, where she let fans paint her Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. In 2013 Stiefvater went rally racing in a race car printed with the cover of The Raven Boys.
In 2015, Stiefvater drove her Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X in a race against fellow author John Green at the Princeton Speedway. Both their vehicles caught fire.

Personal life

Stiefvater has a personal blog where she shares her life events. Stiefvater is married to a "straight-laced husband" and has two children. She has four dogs named Winnie, Parsifal, Jane, and Rose. She also has nine goats and a horse.
After publishing The Raven Cycle, Maggie Stiefvater discovered she was related to Glendower, a Welsh king she includes in the tale.
In 2019, Stiefvater was diagnosed with Addison's disease after she collapsed on a book tour. She has been very public about her health condition in the hope that it would raise awareness for others.

Novels

''Books of Faerie''

Unique Features, in association with Warner Bros., optioned Shiver's film rights shortly after the book was released. A screenplay was written by Nick Pustay.
It was reported in 2011 that David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith’s KatzSmith Productions would produce a film of Scorpio Races. New Line Cinema, in conjunction with Weed Road, optioned the film rights for The Raven Boys shortly before the book's release in September 2012.
In 2019, Stiefvater wrote the pilot for a TV show of The Raven Cycle.

Recognition

''Shiver''