Marc Talbert
Biography
I was born in Boulder, Colorado, in 1953 but raised mainly in Ames, Iowa. My childhood was filled with all the usual childhood things—chasing chickens that escaped from a neighbor’s yard, hiking the woods in the river bottoms, school, sports (mainly swimming and skating and cross-country skiing), and ambitious family vacations each summer that ranged over most of the continental United States. From a very early age, I craved time to read and write. Although I got little encouragement from teachers, my love of reading and writing grew steadily. I finally allowed myself to think I must be a writer when I got special encouragement from several teachers at an international school outside of Stockholm, Sweden, where I spent a year.
During college, I spent summers working as the waterfront director for a camp for diabetics outside Cleveland, Ohio. It was there that I fell in love with teaching. Torn between teaching and writing, I finally majored in elementary education and a minor in communications, with a heavy emphasis in journalism. While at university, I wrote editorial-page columns for the daily Iowa State University student newspaper, the Ames Daily Tribune, and the Cedar Valley Times (Vinton, IA).
After graduating, I taught a combined fifth-sixth grade class in Marshalltown, Iowa (the setting for Toby—next door to a slaughterhouse). The next year I returned to Ames to teach fifth grade under the principal I had in one of my elementary schools I attended as a child. I loved it. Meanwhile on a trip to New Mexico, I met the woman who is now my wife and promptly moved to Santa Fe. I decided to pursue writing as a career and became a technical writer and editor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. After several years I was offered the position of speechwriter for the Director of the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. It was during our year in Washington that I wrote my first novel, Dead Birds Singing.
Upon returning to New Mexico, I continued working part-time at Los Alamos. Now I write novels full-time. I am on my fifteenth book. All of my books are realistic fiction (three of them historical) for middle readers or young adults. Several of them have been published in various foreign countries—Japan, Britain, Germany, Norway, Spain, Columbia, and France.
It is pleasing and satisfying to see the two main interests in my life—writing and children—combine in such a satisfying way.
Serials
Ever since Nick got hold of The Guinness Book of Records, he's been obsessed with notions of being the best at something. That's why he and his bet friend Clay, concoct a scheme to establish a world record of their own.
