Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Garth Nix

Garth Nix (yes it's his real name) was born in 1963 in Melbourne, but raised in Canberra, which is the capital of Australia. Originally intending to be a solider he soon turned away from that insular world and focused on his love of writing. Nix got a BA in professional writing from Canberra University, but had to supplement his income with, well, an income, till he was able to quit his day job and become a full-time writer in 2001. Yet during those years of struggling to be a writer he was always on the periphery of the literary world. Starting in a Canberra bookshop after graduating he has since been a literary agent, a marketing consultant, a book editor, a book publicist, a book sales representative, and finally a full-time author. Nix's wife is even in the literary world, being a publisher. Though as Nix has pointed out, all these jobs didn't help him get his leg up as an author, just kept him connected with that world.

The fact that he is a fantasy writer should come as no surprise when you learn he spent his formative years playing Dungeons and Dragons, only to go on to write scenarios and articles for the RPG. His books, which have sold more than five million copies around the world and appeared on numerous bestsellers lists, include the award-winning young adult fantasy novels Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen, and Clariel, which is a prequel to the Old Kingdom trilogy; the dystopian novel Shade’s Children; and the space opera A Confusion of Princes. His fantasy novels for children include The Ragwitch; the six books of The Seventh Tower sequence; The Keys to the Kingdom series; and the Troubletwisters series and Spirit Animals: Blood Ties (co-written with Sean Williams). And while he might live in a Sydney beach suburb with his family, in his newest book, Newt's Emerald, he inhabits England during the Regency era with a magical romance.

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