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Megan Whalen Turner | |
---|---|
Born | Megan Whalen November 21, 1965 Fort Sill, Oklahoma, U.S. |
Occupation | Author |
Education | University of Chicago (BA) |
Genre | Young adult fiction |
Years active | 1995–present |
Notable awards | Newbery Honor |
Spouse | |
Children | 3 |
Megan Whalen Turner (born November 21, 1965) is an American writer of fantasy fiction for young adults. She is best known for her novel The Thief and its five sequels. In 1997, The Thief was named a Newbery Honor book. [1]
Turner received her BA with honors in English language and literature from the University of Chicago in 1987. [2] Before becoming an author, she worked as a children's book buyer for bookstores in Chicago and Washington D.C. [3]
Turner began writing a collection of short fantasy stories after moving to California in 1989. She published the stories as Instead of Three Wishes: Magical Short Stories in 1995.
Turner is best known for her series of young adult novels primarily revolving around a character named Eugenides. Turner has no official name for the series herself, sometimes referring to it as "The Geniad", [4] but fans have coined it The Queen's Thief. The first book in the series, The Thief , won a Newbery Honor award. [5] The subsequent books in the series are The Queen of Attolia , The King of Attolia , A Conspiracy of Kings , Thick as Thieves , and Return of the Thief. [6]
Turner was the 2013 Literary Guest of Honor and Keynote Speaker at the Life, the Universe, & Everything professional science fiction and fantasy arts symposium. [7]
In July 2018, Turner announced the March 2019 publication date of Return of the Thief. [8] This was first pushed back to spring 2020 before the book was published on October 6, 2020, concluding the series.
Her additional work includes a short story collection titled Instead of Three Wishes, and a short story, "The Baby in the Night Deposit Box", published in a collection called Firebirds , edited by Sharyn November. "The Baby in the Night Deposit Box" was selected for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. She has also written six uncollected short stories — "Thief!", "Destruction", "Eddis", "Knife Dance, "Wineshop", and "Alyta's Missing Earring" — which are set in the world of The Thief. [9]
Her husband is the cognitive scientist Mark Turner. The couple have three sons.
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The Chronicles of Prydain is a pentalogy of children's high fantasy Bildungsroman novels written by American author Lloyd Alexander and published by Henry Holt and Company. The series includes: The Book of Three (1964), The Black Cauldron (1965), The Castle of Llyr (1966), Taran Wanderer (1967), and The High King (1968). The Black Cauldron earned a 1966 Newbery Honor, and The High King won the 1969 Newbery Medal.
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The Thief is a young adult fantasy novel by Megan Whalen Turner published in 1996 by Greenwillow Books, an imprint of William Morrow. It is the first in the Queen's Thief series, the sixth book of which was published in 2020.
Firebirds: An Anthology of Original Fantasy and Science Fiction is a collection of short stories for young adults written by authors associated with Firebird Books, released on that imprint in 2003. It was followed by a sequel anthology, Firebirds Rising, in 2006, which was a World Fantasy Award Finalist. A third anthology, Firebirds Soaring, was published in Spring 2009.
The Queen of Attolia is a young adult fantasy novel by Megan Whalen Turner, published by the Greenwillow Books imprint of William Morrow in 2000. It is the second novel in the Queen's Thief series that Turner inaugurated with The Thief in 1996.
The King of Attolia is a young adult fantasy novel by Megan Whalen Turner, published by the Greenwillow Books imprint of HarperCollins in 2006. It is the third novel in The Queen's Thief series, which Turner began with The Thief in 1996.
A Conspiracy of Kings is a young adult fantasy novel by Megan Whalen Turner, published by the Greenwillow Books imprint of HarperCollins in 2010. It is the fourth novel in the Queen's Thief series that Turner inaugurated with The Thief in 1996.
Jean Edna Karl was an American book editor who specialized in children's and science fiction titles. She founded and led the children's division and young adult and science fiction imprints at Atheneum Books, where she oversaw or edited books that won two Caldecott Medals and five Newbery Medals. One of the Newberys went to the new writer E. L. Konigsburg in 1968 for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
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Thick as Thieves is a 2017 young adult fantasy novel by Megan Whalen Turner, published by Greenwillow Books. It is the fifth novel in the Queen's Thief series that Turner began with The Thief in 1996.