Language English, Chinese Role Author Name Marjorie Liu | Period 2007 to the present Nationality American Partner Junot Diaz | |
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Occupation Novelist, poet, comic book writer Alma mater Lawrence University
University of Wisconsin Genre Adventure, urban fantasy, romance, superhero fantasy Education University of Wisconsin-Madison, Lawrence University Nominations GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book Books The Iron Hunt, Shadow Touch, The Red Heart of Jade, The Last Twilight, A Taste of Crimson Similar People Junot Diaz, Lilith Saintcrow, Caitlin Kittredge, Kelley Armstrong, Carrie Vaughn | ||
Episode 059: SDCC 2016 #5 with Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
Marjorie M. Liu is an American New York Times best-selling author and comic novelist. Her paranormal romance and urban fantasy novels include most notable The Hunter Kiss and Tiger Eye series. Her work for Marvel Comics include NYX, X-23, Dark Wolverine, and Astonishing X-Men. She also writes Monstress for Image Comics for which she was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best New Series. In 2017 she won a Hugo Award for Monstress Vol. 1.
Contents
- Episode 059 SDCC 2016 5 with Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
- Marjorie liu talks x 23 and urban fantasy novels nycc 2011
- Early life
- Career
- Selected writings
- Personal life
- References
Marjorie liu talks x 23 and urban fantasy novels nycc 2011
Early life
Marjorie M. Liu was born in Philadelphia in 1979, and grew up in Seattle, Washington. Her father is Taiwanese, while her mother is an American of French, Scottish and Irish descent. She developed an early love of reading, from books such as Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie books, and the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Campbell, Charles de Lint and Jorge Luis Borges.
Liu majored in East Asian Languages and Cultures and minored in Biomedical Ethics at the Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. During her undergraduate years there, she also practiced her web design skills by designing a fan site called The Wolverine and Jubilee page, based on her discovery of numerous X-Men fan sites that she found to be well-designed. Although she had never read comic books in her youth, she was familiar with the X-Men through the animated TV series and fan fiction, and to familiarize herself with them more closely, she purchased X-Men and Wolverine comics for reference from Powerhouse Comics in Appleton, Wisconsin. In the process, she became a fan of the franchise herself, and wrote her own X-Men fan fiction, finding it an experimental exercise that improved her storytelling skills.
After graduating, she attended law school at the University of Wisconsin, as she was impressed with their East Asian legal center, and the presence of top U.S. experts in Biotech Law on the University's faculty. She found an internship in Beijing working at the Foreign Agriculture Service at the U.S. Embassy, which at the time, was dealing with the Chinese government's new rules regarding the import of genetically modified food. She graduated in May 2003, and was soon admitted to the bar.
Career
Despite enjoying law school, Liu was disillusioned with the life of a lawyer by the time she graduated, and decided to become a writer. After she published poetry, short stories, and non-fiction pieces, she submitted her first novel, a paranormal romantic adventure set in China and the United States called Tiger Eye, which she wrote in a month, to several publishers before it was acquired by Dorchester. It was published in November 2007. She eventually wrote a sequel to Tiger Eye, as well as A Taste of Crimson, the sequel to Liz Maverick's Crimson City, which was published in August 2005.
Seeing a little boy dressed as Spider-Man at a book convention in Tucson, Arizona, Liu remarked to her former literary agent, Lucienne Diver, how she would enjoy writing for Marvel Comics. Diver, who knew an editor who was acquiring authors to write Marvel tie-in novels for Pocket Books, made some inquiries, and found that while the publisher had already employed enough writers to write Spider-Man books amid the release of the 2002 film, they had not hired anyone to write tie-in novels for the X-Men.
After writing the X-Men novel Dark Mirror in 2005, Liu began talking with Marvel editors about doing comics work for them. It was three years later that she got her first assignment, the X-Men spin-off NYX. She served as co-writer on Marvel's Daken: Dark Wolverine with Daniel Way, and wrote the X-23 series, which ended with #21.
Liu is currently living in Boston where she continues to write and make panel appearances. She also teaches a course at MIT on comic book writing and participates at the VONA/VOICES Workshop as guest lecturer at UC Berkeley for popular fiction.
Selected writings
Liu wrote the final 21 issues for Marvel's Astonishing X-Men series with artist Mike Perkins from 2012 to 2013. The series received media attention for featuring Marvel Comics' first gay wedding between Northstar and longterm partner Kyle in issue #51. According to Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Axel Alonso, the issue comes as a response to real world's legalization of same sex marriage in New York. Liu was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in 2013.
Her latest comic series, Monstress, has also gained wide publicity as it explores racism, the effects of war, and feminism.
Personal life
She has been living in Boston with author Junot Diaz since 2011.
Her favorite TV shows include Stargate, Castle, Lost Girl, and The Amazing Race.