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Mary Frances Zambreno

Born: 1954 in Oak Park, Illinois
Pen Name: Robyn Tallis, Jessie Maguire, Nicholas Adams

Connection to Illinois: Zambreno was born in Oak Park. She currently teaches a wide variety of courses at Elmhurst College.

Biography: Mary Frances Zambreno decided to become a writer at the age of twelve, when she first realized that writers were just people with a good supply of paper and a desire to tell stories. Along the way to becoming a writer, she earned a doctorate in medieval literature, learned to read six languages (including English), and discovered that she enjoyed teaching almost as much as she enjoyed writing. Currently, she teaches a wide variety of courses at Elmhurst College, in Elmhurst, Illinois. She became one of the first Writers of the Future contest winners with her story, “A Way Out” (collected in Invisible Pleasures), and her subsequent short fiction quickly became a staple in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s and Jane Yolen’s anthologies. Her stories have appeared in numerous genre magazines and anthologies, but certainly not frequently enough to satisfy her many fans. She even wrote a review column for American Fantasy magazine. Her young adult fantasy novel, A Plague of Sorcerers, was named to the ALA’s list of Best Books for Young Adults in 1992; its sequel, Journeyman Wizard, was a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age in 1994. She has written two other YA fantasy adventures.


Awards:

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Children; Young adult readers

E-Mail: maryz@elmhurst.edu
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000157871516&ref=search=mary+frances+zambreno


Selected Titles

A Plague of Sorcerers
ISBN: 0786811269 OCLC: 33131956

Hyperion Paperbacks for Children, New York : 1996.

When a magic plague begins to take its toll of the wizards in the Empire, Jermyn, a newly-apprenticed wizard, and Delia, his skunk familiar, must find a way to stop it.

A Plague of Sorcerers
ISBN: 0152624309 OCLC: 23080549

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego : ©1991.

When a magic plague begins to take its toll of the wizards in the Empire, Jermyn, a newly-apprenticed wizard, and Delia, his skunk familiar, must find a way to stop it.

Fire Bird
ISBN: 0375811095 OCLC: 45654686

Random House, New York : ©2001.

Thirteen-year-old Emily, her blind engineer father, and a boy from their English village sail aboard the magic ship Basset to an island of mythical animals, where they use faith and imagination to try to restore a legendary lighthouse tower.

Invisible Pleasures
ISBN: 0961035242 OCLC: 68941835

American Fantasy, Woodstock, Il : 2005.

Mary Frances Zambreno's

Journeyman Wizard
ISBN: 0786811277 OCLC: 34077714

Hyperion, New York : 1996.

When Jermyn goes to Land's End to study wizardry under the famous spellmaker Lady Jean Allons, he finds his lessons disrupted by magical mayhem and a mysterious murder.

 

 

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