(person) by junkpile Sat Oct 14 2000 at 16:34:42

Lloyd Alexander was born on January 30, 1924, in Philadelphia. He could read at age three, and was consequently very very bored with school and got terrible grades. At age 15 he announced to his parents that he was going to be a writer. They were of course horrified.

To save money for college, he worked at a bank, which he hated. He dropped out of college after only one semester, upset that he wasn't a writer yet. He thought real-life adventure might turn him into a writer, so he joined the army. He was promptly shipped to Texas. They made him an artilleryman, a cymbal player in the band, an organist in the post chapel, and a first-aid man - none were exciting or bookworthy to Alexander. Finally, he was assigned to the Intelligence department, and was sent to Europe, where he saw the castles and mountains and whatnot of Wales, which would later become the setting for many of his books.

Alexander was let out of the army to go to the University of Paris, where he met his future wife, Janine. They married in 1946 and returned to Pennsylvania with her daughter, Madeleine.

Back in the US, Alexander wrote novel after novel which publishers unhesitatingly turned down. He worked as a cartoonist, advertising writer, layout artist, and associate editor for a small magazine. His books were consistently rejected for seven years before the first one was published.

He spent the next ten years writing for adults, then, with Time Cat in 1963, switched to writing kids' books, and has never regretted it.

Alexander and his wife still live in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, where he says "there is no hill, unless you count the bump in the road across from the barber shop."

When he gets writer's block, he goes back to bed. He calls this "thinking horizontally."

Lloyd Alexander has a nose like you would just not believe. His middle name is Chudley.


Quotes:

"Not only in literature, music, and painting spring from the seedbed of imagination; but, as well, all the sciences, mathematics, philosophies, cosmologies. Without imagination, how could we have invented the wheel or the computer? Or toothpaste? Or nuclear weapons? Or speculate 'What if--?' Or have any compassionate sense what it's like to live in another person's skin?"

"I never did find out all I wanted to know about writing and realize I never will. All that writers can do is to keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts. If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn."

"In any art, boredom is not a virtue."


Books:

The Arkadians

The Beggar Queen

The Black Cauldron

The Book of Three

The Castle of Llyr

The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man

Danger Along the Ohio

The Drackenberg Adventure

The El Dorado Adventure

The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha

The Fortune-Tellers

The Foundling: And Other Tales of Prydain

Gypsy Rizka

The High King   (1969 Newbery Award)

The House Gobbaleen

How the Cat Swallowed Thunder

The Illyrian Adventure

The Iron Ring

The Jedera Adventure

Lad: A Dog

The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian: A Grand Extravaganza, Including a Performance by the Entire Cast of the Gallimaufry-Theatricus

The Philadelphia Adventure

The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen

Taran Wanderer

Time Cat: The Remarkable Journeys of Jason and Gareth

The Town Cats and Other Tales

Westmark

The Wizard in the Tree


thanksto:
http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/4802/#bio
http://www.cbcbooks.org/columns/archives/lalexan.htm
http://www.friend.ly.net/scoop/biographies/alexanderlloyd/
www.amazon.com

I like it! 2 C!s