Simon Maginn
Simon Maginn |Sheep], which was released as a film under the title The Dark'' in 2005.
Early life
Maginn was born in Wallasey, Merseyside) in 1961. He cites among his early influences films like Psycho, The [Amityville Horror |The Amityville Horror] and The Shining, as well as novels like Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast and The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. He studied music at the University of Sussex, specialising in percussion and composition.Career
Maginn published his first novel, Sheep, in 1994, which won WHSmith Fresh Talent Award. He is also the author of: Virgins and Martyrs, A Sickness of the Soul, Methods of Confinement and the novella Rattus. The last of these was published alongside a novella by Gary Fry, in a compilation entitled Feral Companions.Maginn has also published satirical comedies under the pseudonym Simon Nolan: As Good as it Gets, The Vending Machine of Justice and Whitehawk.
In 1993, Maginn was one of six authors chosen by W. H. Smith for a campaign involving a purchase of 20,000 paperback books. At the time, Maginn was a music teacher.
He is politically active, both on and off social media. In 2018, Maginn spoke out on what he called: 'the fabrication of an “antisemitism crisis” in the Labour Party and the smearing of its socialist leader'. As a result he was involved in an online clash with J. K. Rowling over his tweets on this subject.