James Magruder

James Magruder is a fiction writer, playwright, and translator. His stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Subtropics, Bloom, The Normal School, The Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, Mary, and the anthologies “Boy Crazy” and “New Stories from the Midwest.” His debut novel, “Sugarless,” (University of Wisconsin Press) was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, the VCU Cabell First Novelists Award, and shortlisted for the 2010 William Saroyan International Writing Prize. His second work of fiction is a novel-in-stories titled “Let Me See It.” His translations and adaptations for the stage include CHRISTMAS CAROL 1941 (Arena Stage), Marivaux’s THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE (Center Stage, Classic Stage Company, La Jolla Playhouse), the book for its musical version, TRIUMPH OF LOVE (Broadway and beyond, Germany, and Japan), Labiche’s EATING CROW (Dallas Main Street Theatre), Lesage’s TURCARET (Catalyst Theatre, Washington D.C.), Dancourt’s KNIGHT ERRANT, Molière’s THE IMAGINARY INVALID (Yale Repertory Theatre, People’s Light & Theatre), BOUGIE MAN, a version of “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” for South Coast Rep, THE MISER (Center Stage, Northlight Theatre), and Gozzi’s THE LOVE OF THREE ORANGES (La Jolla Playhouse). His plays PENELOPE & THE STERILE FIELD, TOO MUCH OF ME, NINE ROOMS WORTH, DEAD PARENTS, PISSING MATCH, and DUNKLER-RELATED DISORDERS have been staged in Baltimore, Atlanta, and New York, and published in “The Art of the One-Act,” “Third Coast,” and “Arts & Letters.” His “Three French Comedies” (Yale University Press) was named an Outstanding Literary Translation by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Other projects include DER BOURGEOIS BIGSHOT, a reconstruction of the Moliere/Hofmannsthal/Strauss musical comedy “Der Bürger als Edelmann” for Princeton University. His writing has been supported by the MacDowell Colony, where he was a Thornton Wilder Fellow; the Maryland State Arts Council; the New Harmony Project; the Ucross Foundation; the Blue Mountain Center; the Jerome Foundation; and the 2010 Sewanee Writers’ Conference, where he was a Walter E. Dakin Fellow in Fiction. He holds degrees in French literature from Cornell and Yale and a DFA from the Yale School of Drama. He teaches dramaturgy at Swarthmore College, fiction at the University of Baltimore, and playwriting at Princeton University.