Charles de Lint Biography Quotes 23 Report mistakes

Early Life and Background
Charles de Lint was born on December 22, 1951, in Zaventem, Belgium, and moved to Canada when he was young. He grew up to identify as Canadian, eventually making his home in Ottawa, Ontario. From early on he was drawn to folklore, traditional music, and the kinds of stories in which the everyday world brushes against the uncanny. Those interests would become the bedrock of his career, informing the voice and themes that made him one of the most distinctive figures in contemporary fantasy.

Beginnings as a Writer
By the early 1980s de Lint began publishing novels and short fiction, finding an audience for stories that blended myth and folktale with modern settings. His breakthrough novel Moonheart helped establish the parameters of what would soon be called urban fantasy: a believable city, a cast of artists and outsiders, and old stories threading through new lives. He also built a reputation as a reliable presence in magazines and anthologies, bringing a lyrical, compassionate tone to speculative fiction at a time when the field was experimenting with new forms.

Newford and the Shape of Urban Fantasy
De Lint is closely associated with Newford, a fictional North American city he developed across many books and stories. Newford became more than a backdrop; it was a shared canvas for interlocking narratives about community, memory, and the subtle magic of ordinary days. Readers met recurring characters like the artist Jilly Coppercorn and musicians and writers who reappear in novels and collections, their lives intersecting as art, trauma, and myth collide. Works such as Memory and Dream, Trader, Someplace to Be Flying, Forests of the Heart, The Onion Girl, and Widdershins exemplify his approach: respect for indigenous and immigrant traditions, attention to the ethics of storytelling, and the belief that art can heal as well as reveal. The city let him braid continuity through dozens of tales while keeping each entry accessible.

Short Fiction and Story Cycles
A prolific short story writer, de Lint shaped his fictional universe through collections that read like neighborhood tours across years. Dreams Underfoot, The Ivory and the Horn, Moonlight and Vines, and Muse and Reverie present stand-alone pieces that echo one another in theme and setting. These collections are notable for their empathy toward people on the margins and for their focus on friendship, recovery, and the responsibility that comes with encountering wonder.

Work for Younger Readers
De Lint extended his mythic sensibility to young adult and children's literature without sacrificing complexity. The Blue Girl and later novels like The Painted Boy and the Wildlings books (beginning with Under My Skin) introduced younger protagonists to the thresholds between everyday life and the fantastical. For younger readers he created original fairy-tale adventures in collaboration with illustrator Charles Vess, notably The Cats of Tanglewood Forest and Seven Wild Sisters, whose imagery and storytelling reinforce one another. These projects show de Lint's ongoing interest in how stories guide people at different stages of life.

Pseudonyms and Darker Work
Alongside his name-recognition novels, de Lint published darker contemporary fantasy and horror under the pseudonym Samuel M. Key. The pen name gave him space to shift tone and emphasis, exploring harsher textures of the supernatural while remaining distinct from the gentler, community-centered focus of his Newford tales.

Music, Art, and Collaboration
Music is integral to de Lint's life and to his fiction, where songs often act as catalysts for change. He performs and records music, and this creative thread connects closely with his partnership with MaryAnn Harris, his wife, a musician and visual artist. Harris's art and photography have accompanied his projects and public presence, and the two have appeared together at readings and events, modeling the cross-pollination of arts that his fiction celebrates. Visual collaboration has also been central to several books with Charles Vess, whose illustrations deepen the folkloric mood that de Lint evokes in prose.

Editing, Reviewing, and Community
Beyond fiction, de Lint contributed a long-running review column, Books to Look For, to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, where he championed new writers and notable small-press work. His essays and reviews helped shape conversations about the fantastic during a period of vibrant growth. Within the wider mythic arts community he has been a frequent contributor to anthologies guided by editors Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow, whose projects helped define a shared space for mythic fiction, slipstream, and contemporary fantasy. De Lint's presence at conventions, workshops, and readings reflects a career spent not only creating stories but also advocating for the artists who tell them.

Themes and Craft
Across genres and age categories, de Lint's work is marked by compassion, musical prose, and a grounded sense of place. He is attentive to trauma and recovery, to the ways communities can fail or save their members, and to the moral obligations of using power wisely. Folklore in his hands is not decorative; it is a living archive that characters engage with, reinterpret, and sometimes resist. His narratives often ask what it means to make art of one's life.

Recognition and Influence
De Lint's fiction has received wide critical attention, earning awards and nominations in the fantasy field, including Canada's Aurora Awards, and appearing on year-end and best-of lists. More broadly, his work influenced a generation of writers who brought myth into modern streets, and it helped readers find urban fantasy that was as humane as it was imaginative. The Newford cycle in particular proved that a shared-world approach could remain literary and character-driven, inspiring subsequent series by other authors.

Personal Life and Legacy
Long based in Ottawa with MaryAnn Harris, de Lint has maintained a steady connection to readers through performances, signings, and online engagement. He is known for generosity toward fans and emerging writers, an extension of the neighborly ethic at the heart of his fiction. His legacy rests not only on a shelf of beloved novels and story collections but also on a vision of the city as a place where story, song, friendship, and old magic meet, leaving people and places changed for the better.

Our collection contains 23 quotes who is written by Charles, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Wisdom - Truth - Music - Meaning of Life.

• 2001 The Onion Girl (Novel)
• 1997 Jack of Kinrowan (Novel)
• 1984 Moonheart (Novel)