Today we’d like to introduce you to James Magruder.
Hi James, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born in Washington, DC, and spent my traumatically-formative teenage years in Chicagoland. I went east to college and graduate school at Cornell and Yale School of Drama. I moved to Baltimore in 1991 to work at Center Stage as their Resident Dramaturg. With only 13 T-helper cells to my name, I expected to die of AIDS by 1997, but I was one of the first combination therapy miracles. (My HIV viral load has been undetectable for 27 years.) By the turn of the new millennium, my recovered immune system and I decided to get serious about my childhood dream of becoming a writer, and so I started writing short stories. I have now four published books of fiction to my name: SUGARLESS (2009); LET ME SEE IT (2014); LOVE SLAVES OF HELEN HADLEY HALL (2016); and VAMP UNTIL READY (2021). I have also written the books to two Broadway musicals: TRIUMPH OF LOVE (1997) and HEAD OVER HEELS (2018), the blank verse mashup of the Go-Go’s song catalog and Sir Philip Sidney’s ARCADIA. I’ve taught at the Yale School of Drama, Princeton University, and the University of Baltimore. I am now a reading tutor at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in Bolton Hill.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Acquiring HIV in 1985 was quite a wrench, but I was lucky enough when I moved to Baltimore in 1991 to have health insurance from Center Stage and to be near to all the research coming out of Johns Hopkins and the NIH in Bethesda. My faith and my determination probably also had something to do with why I stayed alive.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a writer first and foremost now. I’d like to think, at my advanced age, that what I know best is story–how to generate and revise a story, and how to unlock stories in others.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
People are always astonished that I still use a flip phone, the kind their grandparents might have. Whenever I need to replace it, I go to Best Buy and ask for the dumbest phone they carry. I don’t want to be connected to the Internet all day long. Life is too short for that.
