Personal life

David Maine was born in Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...

, and grew up in Farmington, Connecticut

Farmington, Connecticut

Farmington is a town located in Hartford County in the Farmington Valley area of central Connecticut in the United States. The population was 25,340 at the 2010 census. It is home to the world headquarters of several large corporations including Carrier Corporation, Otis Elevator Company, and Carvel...

. Attended Oberlin College

Oberlin College

Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

 (1981–85) and the University of Arizona

University of Arizona

The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...

 (1988–91), where he graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing.

Maine relocated to Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

 in 1995 and Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 in 1998. He left Pakistan in 2008 and currently lives in Honolulu, Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

, USA. he has taught at The University of Phoenix, Hawai'i-Pacific University and The University of Hawai'i at Manoa. In the fall of 2011 he was invited to be the Distinguished Visiting Writer at The University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Since 1994 he has been married to novelist Uzma Aslam Khan

Uzma Aslam Khan

-Early life and education:Khan was born in Lahore and brought up in Manila, Philippines; Tokyo, Japan; London, UK and Karachi. She was educated at St. Joseph's Convent School and St. Patrick's High School both in Karachi...

.

Career

Early short stories appeared in the literary magazines Other Voices (1991), The Beloit Fiction Journal (1991) and West Branch (1993).

First novel The Preservationist was published by St Martin's Press in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

in 2004, Canongate UK in 2005 (under the title The Flood) and other publishers around the world. Favorable reviews appeared in The New York Times, Time magazine, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. A retelling of the Biblical tale of Noah, the book trod a fine line between respect and irreverence for the source material. Follow-up novel Fallen (2005 in the US; 2006 in the UK) featured a somewhat darker treatment of the garden of Eden story, featuring Abel and Cain and Adam and Eve. The book's reverse chronology (it begins with Cain as an old man haunted by his brother and unwinds to the moment immediately following Adam and Eve's expulsion) was viewed as gimmicky by some critics, but overall, the book was as favorably received as the first. Janet Maslin of The New York Times stated that "this book's power to rivet the reader approaches the miraculous." Fallen caused the Los Angeles Times Book Review to report that "Maine's writing is as human as it is divine."

Reviews were mixed for Maine's third Biblical retelling, 2006's The Book of Samson. The New York Times remained enthusiastic, stating that "his audacity is irresistible," while another noted that "by fleshing out the story on its own terms, [Maine] conveys the amplitude of its moral horror." But some critics, perhaps uncomfortable with the equation of "moral horror" with much-loved Sunday school parables, remained muted.

In 2008 Maine published his fourth novel, Monster, 1959. This marked a sharp break from the Biblically-themed stories that had made up his oeuvre thus far. Its skewed retelling of a 1950s-style monster movie earned praise in some quarters, but puzzled looks in others. The New York Times Book Review characterized it as "An Audacious literary mishmash... ungainly and oddly endearing." In some ways it remains his most challenging work to date.

August 2011 saw Maine independently releasing an eBook entitled The Gamble of the Godless, an epic fantasy which marked another major shift in focus for his published work. The first volume of a proposed series, the book has received positive notices from bloggers and reviewers on such sites as www.goodreads.com. One blogger went so far as to say that "David Maine has created a wonderful cast of characters and a elaborately detailed world – one of the most engaging I’ve experienced." Another praises it as "a fun read that you will find yourself easily slipping into."

Maine's next literary novel, An Age of Madness, is scheduled for release in fall 2012 from Red Hen Press, a small but highly-regarded literary press based in Sacramento, California.

Published works

• The Preservationist (St. Martin's Press, 2004) Also published as The Flood
• Fallen (St. Martin's Press, 2005)
• The Book of Samson (St. Martin's Press, 2006)
• Monster, 1959 (St. Martin's Press, 2008)
• The Gamble of the Godless (independent release, 2011)
• The Rime of the Remorseless (independent release, forthcoming 2012)
• An Age of Madness (Red Hen Press, forthcoming 2012)