Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine LEngle was an American writer best known for her young adult fiction, especially the time-winning Newbery Medal A Wrinkle and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and Many Waters. Her work reflects her strong interest in modern science: for example, tesseracts are featured prominently in A Wrinkle in Time, mitochondrial DNA in A Wind in the Door, organ regeneration in The Starfish's Arm, and so on." Madeleine was bo... rn on November 29, 1918, and spent her formative years in New York City. Instead of her school work, she found that she would rather write stories, poems and newspapers for herself, which was reflected in her grades (not the best), but was not discouraged. At the age of 12, she moved with her parents to the French Alps and went to an English boarding school where her passion for writing continued to grow, thankfully. She flourished at Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, during her high school years back in the United States, spending holidays with her mother in a rambling old beach cottage on a beautiful stretch of Florida beach. She went to Smith College and studied English with some wonderful teachers as she read the classics and continued her own creative writing. She graduated with honors and moved to an apartment in New York's Greenwich Village. She worked in the theater where she was given the time to write Equity union pay and a flexible schedule! She published her first two novels in Anton Chekovs The Cherry Orchard during these yearsA Small Rain and Ilsabe before meeting with Hugh Franklin, her future husband. They married during The Joyous Season. She had a baby girl and kept writing, eventually moving to Connecticut in a small dairy farm village with more cows than people to raise the family away from the city. They purchased a dead general store and revived it for nine years. With three children they moved back to the city, and Hugh revitalized his professional career as an actor. The family has kept the country house, Crosswicks, and continues to spend summers there. Madeleine continued to write and Hugh to act as the years passed and the children grew, and they enjoyed each other and their lives. Madeleine began her association with St. John the Divine Cathedral Church, where she has been the librarian for more than thirty years and has maintained an office. It was her writing and lecturing that kept her going after Hughs' death in 1986. She has lived through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century and has written more than 60 books and continues to write. She loves to be with her friends, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren."http://us.macmillan.com/author/madele..Copyright2007 Crosswicks, Ltd. (Madeleine LEngle, President)READ MORE