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Norma Fox Mazer was born May 15, 1931. This prolific young adult author from Glen Falls, New York, began her career writing pulp fiction, 5,000 words each week for eight years. Both she and her novelist husband, Harry Mazer, did this to support their four children.
“We learned so much during those years. How to write a story, how not to be afraid of words, how to sit in a chair and face the blank paper [typewriter days], how to draft and not kill yourself because what comes out is not the vision in your mind, and how to revise, revise, revise to get as close as you can to the story you want to tell.”
At one point, her agent told her that the children’s market was “hungry,” thus beginning her career in children’s literature. Her second novel, A Figure of Speech, was nominated for a National Book Award. Her science fiction novel, Saturday, the Twelfth of October, won a Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. Mazer also wrote a Newbery Honor book, After the Rain, an engaging story of getting to know a grandparent. Taking Terri Mueller was an Edgar Allen Poe Award winner.
Mazer died October 17, 2009.