# Maggie Stiefvater

Margaret Stiefvater (/ˈstiːvɑːtər/ STEE-vah-tər; née Hummel; born November 18, 1981) is an American writer of young adult fiction. She is best known for her fantasy series The Wolves of Mercy Falls and The Raven Cycle.

## Life and career
### Early life and education

Maggie Stiefvater was born Heidi Hummel on November 18, 1981, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. At 16, she legally changed her first name to Margaret. As a child, Stiefvater was a voracious reader who enjoyed writing. By age 16, she was submitting manuscripts to publishers. After being home-schooled from sixth grade on, Stiefvater attended Mary Washington College, graduating with a B.A. in history. 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." After graduating, she worked as a portrait artist, specializing in equestrian art. Her father, Keith Hummel MD, is also the author of a scientific thriller entitled, Immortal Red, an Amazon Best-seller that imagines the real-life eternally-living Turritopsis Dohrni jellyfish in a scenario where this remarkable creature's longevity is weaponized.
In 2010, she gave a TEDx Talk for NASA entitled "How Bad Teens Become Famous People", in which she reflects on her youth as a "Bad Teen" and how those years have impacted her.

### Writing career

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 Best Seller 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.
Stiefvater has written on her blog about her techniques and methods when writing. In 2018 and 2019, Maggie Stiefvater gave writing seminars entitled Portraits & Dreams: Writing with Maggie Stiefvater. It included a lecture and a Q&A. She gave this lecture in Edinburgh, New York City, Seattle, Austin, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Toronto, and Vancouver.

### Music

Stiefvater plays various musical instruments. She recorded original compositions for the audio books of The Scorpio Races and The Raven Cycle. She has a SoundCloud account where she releases her original tracks. Stiefvater has released playlists for some of her novels of songs she listened to while writing.

### Art

Before turning to writing full-time, Stiefvater was a professional portrait artist, specializing in colored pencil.
Stiefvater created a Tarot card deck, The Raven's Prophecy Tarot Cards, in September 2015.
She was asked to create a poster for the American Library Association to promote reading. The poster includes characters from The Raven Cycle and the phrase "The future belongs to those who read."

### Cars

Stiefvater greatly enjoys cars, especially fast ones. She has completed a stunt driving class. She has worked as an automotive journalist.
Stiefvater has frequently used her passion for vehicles to promote her novels. To promote the second book of The Raven Cycle, The Dream Thieves, Stiefvater spray-painted her own car. She later allowed fans to also spray-paint the vehicle at the book's launch in Kansas City on September 18, 2013. She repeated this for another event in October 2016, where she let fans paint her Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. In 2013 Stiefvater went rally racing in a race car printed with the cover of The Raven Boys.
In 2015, Stiefvater drove her Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X in a race against fellow author John Green at the Princeton Speedway in Princeton, Minnesota. Both of their vehicles caught fire.

### Personal life

Stiefvater is married to Edward Stiefvater, with whom she has two children. The two became engaged when she was nineteen.