About

The “Official Biography”

Madeleine James’s essays and short fiction have appeared online and in print in Cosmo UK, Electric Literature, Bust, MUTHA, Queen Mob’s TeaHouse and various small press anthologies (as Malin James). In 2017, she published Roadhouse Blues, a short story collection for Go Deeper, a small, indie press.

She began her professional life as a bookseller in San Francisco, earned her MA in Comparative Literature, and became a librarian to avoid the student loans that a PhD would require. She was writing the whole time. Now, she lives in northern California with her husband, their wildly amazing fourteen year old and Wilbur, their floppy brown dog.

The Casual Biography

“You’re a writer? Cool! What do you write?”

When I was younger, the answer sprawled. I’ll spare you an example.

I’ve tightened up the answer in my forties. “I write what they’ll pay me for, and I write what they won’t. Mostly I write fiction and essays, and I love it.”

“What do you write about?” is a little more involved, but I’ll try to keep that tight too.

I n 2017, I started writing a novel called The Legends of Lady Strange, which I finished couple of months ago, so now I’m emerging from four years of novel-writing hibernation. In a nutshell, Lady Strange is novel about the overlap of stories and history.  There’s a haunted abbey, a Victorian muse turned authoress, and a forest full of ghosts, all of which are among my favorite things.

As for short form, I have niches, like most writers do. Most commonly, I write personal and hybrid essays on books, parenthood, mental health and pop culture (to a degree). In fiction I’m all over the map. Imagine if Angela Carter and Dorothy Parker had a baby who dove down rabbit holes.

Some Rabbit Holes in No Particular Order:

Literature and Books, Narrative Structure and Form, Cultural Curiosity, Inquiry, Neurology, Evolutionary psychology, Psychiatry,  Macabre Victorian History, Religion vs Spirituality, Etymology, Death in Different Cultures, Process and Craft (Writing and Acting), Existential Kicks in the Head, Japanese Literature, San Francisco, Witches in Folklore and History, the Algonquin Round Table, Old Hollywood, Fairy Tales, Ghost Stories, Liminal Spaces, Identity and Duality, Folklore, Visual Symbolism, Pre-Christian Myths.

There are and will be others. The world is a big and interesting place.