Biography
Born in New Jersey, poet Maggie Estep delivered her short fiction at New York venues including the Nuyorican Poets' Café and Café Bustelo until MTV scouts discovered one of her performances. Impressed by the material, the network scheduled her for on-air segments that transformed the trajectory of her emerging career. Those broadcasts opened doors to Lollapalooza tour dates and the issuance of two spoken-word recordings. Imago issued the No More Mr. Nice Girl CD in 1994, while Mercury released Love Is a Dog From Hell in 1997. Harmony Books brought out Diary of an Emotional Idiot, her first novel, in the United States that year; editions followed in Italy and Germany in 1999, after which Simon & Schuster published Soft Maniacs. Her pieces have also appeared in Israel, and she has presented readings at the Frankfurt Book Fair as well as Lincoln Center in New York. Magazine credits encompass the Village Voice, Shout, Harpers Bazaar, Spin, Elle, and Black Book. A child of the 1960s, Estep divided her formative years between markedly dissimilar parents. Her conventional mother lived in France, where Estep attended the nation’s costly, traditional Catholic academies, while stretches with her father in the United States involved following his itinerant horse-trainer circuit. She later studied at the State University of New York and Colorado’s Naropa Institute, enrolling in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. In 1981 she established residence on New York’s Lower East Side. Still in her teens, she entered the punk rock milieu and used drugs; heroin dependency prompted a period in rehabilitation, where her writing voice took shape. Before MTV offered the appearance that initiated her wider recognition, she held assorted jobs such as go-go dancer, maid, and clerk.
Albums