Background
Maggie Stiefvater was born on November 18, 1981, in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
2010
Maggie Stiefvater with her new novel.
2010
Maggie Stiefvater and Loki, her '73 Camaro.
2010
Maggie Stiefvater in the studio recording the song for the Linger trailer, "One Thousand Paper Cranes," at Third Stream Music & Design.
2010
Maggie Stiefvater
2011
Maggie Stiefvater
2011
Maggie Stiefvater with the Georgia Peach Award.
2013
Maggie Stiefvater
2014
This is the 2014 Detcont Award awarded to The Dream Thieves, and the amazing trophy was designed by Jeremy Haney.
2014
Maggie Stiefvater, photo by Stephen Sullivan
2015
Maggie Stiefvater with David Levithan, Nicola Yoon, Gayle Forman, Holly Black and Maureen Johnson.
2018
Maggie Stiefvater is presenting her novel.
2018
Maggie Stiefvater likes racing.
2018
Maggie Stiefvater
2018
Maggie Stiefvater
2018
Maggie Stiefvater with her published novels.
2018
Maggie Stiefvater
2019
Maggie Stiefvater with her new novel.
Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Virginia, United States
Stiefvater graduated from Mary Washington College with a Bachelor of Arts in history.
Margaret "Maggie" Stiefvater
Margaret "Maggie" Stiefvater
Margaret "Maggie" Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater
(For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behi...)
For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf - her wolf - is a chilling presence she can't seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human... until the cold makes him shift back again. Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It's her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human - or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.
https://www.amazon.com/Shiver-Wolves-Mercy-Falls-Book-ebook/dp/B002JWD6AS/?tag=2022091-20
2009
(For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a v...)
For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past... and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves... and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.
https://www.amazon.com/Linger-Shiver-Wolves-Mercy-Falls-ebook/dp/B003NHRGSQ/?tag=2022091-20
2010
(Grace and Sam found each other. But he stakes are even hi...)
Grace and Sam found each other. But he stakes are even higher than before. Wolves are being hunted. Lives are being threatened. And love is harder and harder to hold on to as death comes closing in.
https://www.amazon.com/Forever-Shiver-Wolves-Mercy-Falls-ebook/dp/B004VSTP4Y/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant m...)
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue never sees them - until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks to her. His name is Gansey, a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can't entirely explain. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul whose emotions range from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher who notices many things but says very little.
https://www.amazon.com/Raven-Boys-Cycle-Book-ebook/dp/B0096T5P7O/?tag=2022091-20
2012
(If you could steal things from dreams, what would you tak...)
If you could steal things from dreams, what would you take? Ronan Lynch has secrets. Some he keeps from others. Some he keeps from himself. One secret: Ronan can bring things out of his dreams. And sometimes he’s not the only one who wants those things. Ronan is one of the raven boys - a group of friends, practically brothers, searching for a dead king named Glendower, who they think is hidden somewhere in the hills by their elite private school, Aglionby Academy. The path to Glendower has long lived as an undercurrent beneath town.
https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Thieves-Raven-Cycle-Book-ebook/dp/B00C2YWB0E/?tag=2022091-20
2013
(Cole St. Clair has come to California for one reason: to ...)
Cole St. Clair has come to California for one reason: to get back Isabel Culpeper. She fled from his damaged, drained life, and damaged and drained it even more. He doesn't just want her. He needs her. lost. Isabel is trying to build herself a life in Los Angeles. It's not really working. She can play the game as well as all the other fakes. But what's the point?
https://www.amazon.com/Sinner-Shiver-Wolves-Mercy-Falls-ebook/dp/B00HERJBV6/?tag=2022091-20
2014
(Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her ...)
Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs. The trick with found things, though, is how easily they can be lost. Friends can betray.
https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Lily-Raven-Cycle-Book-ebook/dp/B00JD36AV8/?tag=2022091-20
2014
(All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause he...)
All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love's death. She doesn't believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem, but as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore.
https://www.amazon.com/Raven-King-Cycle-Book-ebook/dp/B00TYTPJ90/?tag=2022091-20
2016
(James Morgan has an almost unearthly gift for music. And ...)
James Morgan has an almost unearthly gift for music. And it has attracted Nuala, a soul-snatching faerie muse who fosters and then feeds on the creative energies of exceptional humans until they die. James has plenty of reasons to fear the faeries, but as he and Nuala collaborate on an achingly beautiful musical composition, James finds his feelings towards Nuala deepening. But the rest of the fairies are not as harmless.
https://www.amazon.com/Ballad-Gathering-Faerie-Lament-Novel-ebook/dp/B01LOBEDN8/?tag=2022091-20
2016
(Here is a thing everyone wants: A miracle. Here is a thin...)
Here is a thing everyone wants: A miracle. Here is a thing everyone fears: What it takes to get one. Any visitor to Bicho Raro, Colorado, is likely to find a landscape of dark saints, forbidden love, scientific dreams, miracle-mad owls, estranged affections, one or two orphans, and a sky full of watchful desert stars. At the heart of this place, you will find the Soria family, who all have the ability to perform unusual miracles. And at the heart of this family are three cousins longing to change its future: Beatriz, the girl without feelings, who wants only to be free to examine her thoughts; Daniel, the Saint of Bicho Raro, who performs miracles for everyone but himself; and Joaquin, who spends his nights running a renegade radio station under the name Diablo Diablo.
https://www.amazon.com/All-Crooked-Saints-Maggie-Stiefvater/dp/0545930812/?tag=2022091-20
2017
(Isobel is an artistic prodigy with a dangerous set of cli...)
Isobel is an artistic prodigy with a dangerous set of clients: the sinister fair folk, immortal creatures who cannot bake bread or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and Isobel’s paintings are highly prized. But when she receives her first royal patron - Rook, the autumn prince - she makes a terrible mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes - a weakness that could cost him his life. Furious, Rook spirits her away to his kingdom to stand trial for her crime. But something is seriously wrong in his world, and they are attacked from every side.
https://www.amazon.com/Enchantment-Ravens-Margaret-Rogerson-ebook/dp/B06ZXWGVDC/?tag=2022091-20
2017
(The dreamers walk among us... and so do the dreamed. Thos...)
The dreamers walk among us... and so do the dreamed. Those who dream cannot stop dreaming - they can only try to control it. Those who are dreamed cannot have their own lives - they will sleep forever if their dreamers die. And then there are those who are drawn to the dreamers. To use them. To trap them. To kill them before their dreams destroy us all. Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality. Jordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it. Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer... and a killer.
https://www.amazon.com/Call-Down-Hawk-Dreamer-Trilogy/dp/1338188321/?tag=2022091-20
2019
artist editor musician novelist writer
Maggie Stiefvater was born on November 18, 1981, in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Stiefvater graduated from Mary Washington College with a Bachelor of Arts in history.
Before Maggie Stiefvater became a full-time author, she was a professional artist, which was a rather challenging occupation in rural Virginia. She made her living by painting the heads of cats onto copies of the Old Masters and then selling them on eBay, and also she wrote blog posts about what effect the cat-head painting had on her life.
However, 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.
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 Bestseller List. In 2010, Linger debuted at the number one spot on the New York Times Bestseller 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.
Her stand-alone novel The Scorpio Races written in 2011 is currently in development for a film adaptation. The screenwriter Jack Thorne will adapt the novel for the screen. It will be produced by Jay Ireland and KatzSmith Productions who has also produced movies such as the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King's novel It, as well as The Lego Batman Movie. The release of the film adaptation of Stiefvater's novel has not been announced.
Stiefvater is also known for her music. She played the highland bagpipes competitively while in college, and began a Celtic band, Ballynoola, that toured on the eastern seaboard. She plays multiple other instruments as well. With her sister, Kate Hummel, she writes and records a piece of music for each novel she releases. These are released to the public in the form of animated book trailers. "Stiefvater" is also known for drawing on guitars with Sharpies and giving them away to fans at major events.
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. In 2011, the option lapsed. Warner Bros. optioned the film rights to The Scorpio Races shortly after that book was released.
David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith’s KatzSmith Productions will produce the film. 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. No screenplay has been written; casting has not begun.
(Isobel is an artistic prodigy with a dangerous set of cli...)
2017(For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a v...)
2010(Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant m...)
2012(If you could steal things from dreams, what would you tak...)
2013(All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause he...)
2016(For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behi...)
2009(James Morgan has an almost unearthly gift for music. And ...)
2016(Here is a thing everyone wants: A miracle. Here is a thin...)
2017(Grace and Sam found each other. But he stakes are even hi...)
2011(Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her ...)
2014(The dreamers walk among us... and so do the dreamed. Thos...)
2019(Cole St. Clair has come to California for one reason: to ...)
2014"Before I was an author I was a full-time portrait artist, and when I started out my first goal was to create an exact copy of a photograph. Once I’d accomplished that I realized it would be better art if I could not only re-create a photograph but also capture the object better than a photograph could. Then once I’d accomplished that I realized I could make the best portrait if I drew a likeness that was not only better than a photograph but also something only I could do - a Maggie Stiefvater piece.
And that’s how I create my characters. I start out with a real human model, then I strip it away so it becomes someone who’s even better, and then I finally come up with a character who’s someone only I could write. But they all start out with a human heart.
Almost all of the female characters in my books are written as a reaction to what it means to be a woman in a man’s society. I grew up as a female bagpiper - I used to practice four hours a day, and every weekend I’d play competitively."
Quotations:
"When I was an angry but dreamy young child, all I wanted to do was travel to a bigger, more mythic time bristling with nobility and mysticism. Some time period where the things too powerful for names existed a little closer to the surface. It took me 30 years and a history major to figure out that one of those time periods was now."
"Rejection in the publishing business isn't really a "no." It's a "not yet." I didn't want to get published with a book most people didn't like, so I never saw it as rejection. I didn't want to trick my way into being an author. I wanted to publish books that made readers want my next one without knowing what it was about - and I would say that's my greatest success."
"I’m very interested in the idea of how we all think of ourselves as the hero in our own lives, even if what we’re doing is not actually heroic. When you step outside the main character and study them from another angle, sometimes you see that they are actually not very nice people at all. And sometimes when you step inside a villain and look at them from that angle, you see that they are actually much nicer people than you suspected."
"I was nowhere near giving up. I always tell writers that there is nothing magical about learning to write a novel. It’s like learning to play Bach on the piano. Anyone can learn it. Some people just take longer, or they stop before they finish learning the techniques. Novelists are just writers who kept going until they were good. Anyone can get there."
Maggie established a Celtic music band called Ballynoola during her college years and was also a competitive bagpipe player. In addition, she worked for a time as a portrait artist. She is also an automotive enthusiast; her writing on cars has appeared in Jalopnik, Automotive News, and Road & Track.
Here is what Maggie says about her passion for horses: "I’ve loved horses for a very long time, and I saved up for my first horse when I was ten or eleven. I was a bit of a daredevil - always tearing around bareback and jumping three-foot-fences without stirrups, but the thing I loved more than all of that was dressage. I’m not sure it looks like much to someone who doesn’t know horses, but it’s one of the more difficult disciplines to master. It is a lot like dancing with the horse - you must be in perfect agreement, and know each other very well."
Maggie Stiefvater is married to Ed Stiefvater. They have two children and currently live in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia.