Maureen Johnson
Contributing novellas to the anthology Ghosts of the Shadow Market marks one of the more visible moments in Maureen Johnson's publishing career, placing her work within a collection that brings together multiple authors and stories.
Johnson was born on February 16, 1973, in Philadelphia. She is an American novelist and young adult author who writes in English. Her education took her to the University of Delaware and later to Columbia University, where she also attended Columbia University School of the Arts. Over the course of her career she has worked as a novelist and as a children's writer, producing fiction aimed at younger audiences alongside her other work.
Her contributions to larger collaborative projects form a notable part of her published output. She wrote a series of novellas included in Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, and she also has a series of novellas in Ghosts of the Shadow Market. Both of those anthology appearances place her novella work within collections rather than stand-alone volumes, adding a distinct dimension to her career as a novelist.
Those two anthology contributions — in Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy and Ghosts of the Shadow Market — remain concrete, documented parts of her bibliography. They sit alongside her work as a novelist and young adult author, and together with her educational background at the University of Delaware and Columbia University School of the Arts, they make up the shape of a career spent writing fiction in English for young adult and children's audiences.
Quotes by Maureen Johnson
Maureen Johnson's insights on:
It could have been like a fairy tale. But fairy tales aren’t real. Things don’t work like that. There’s a price for everything.
Writing is a lot of sitting down... It’s a lot of trying things out and screwing up... It’s either amazing or it’s the worst thing in the world. Sometimes it goes well, and it’s all you think about, and then, it’s gone. It’s like you’re taking a ride down a river really fast, and then all of a sudden, there’s no water. You’re just sitting in a raft, trying to push it along in the mud. And then you’ve become me.
There is something about early mornings that changes your perceptions subtly. The light is new; no one has put on the defences of the day. All is reset and not quite real yet.
Don-Keun was a new man. The moment they arrived, he vanished for a second. We heard muffled ecstatic screaming coming from somewhere in the back of the Waffle House kitchen, then he reappeared, his face shining with the kind of radiance usually associated with religious epiphany.
There were for sure snakes at the camp. It was entirely made of snakes. Why hadn’t she thought of the snakes?
Stevie said stuff like that all the time and was told she was wrong. David said it once and he got a nod and a compliment. Oh, the magic of dudes. If only they bottled it.
Vitamin D,” Stevie said. “You need it.” “You don’t know that,” he said. “I want to eat my meat in my room with the lights off.” “As a writer, are those really the words you want to use?” Stevie asked.
Once again, her parents’ problems had run through her life like a piece of heavy equipment, smashing everything in their way.