Alumni Spotlight: Maggie Edkins Willis ’09

Balancing Act

By Jana F. Brown

Juggling is not a skill typically associated with writers and visual artists, unless you’re talking about Maggie Edkins Willis ’09. 

A lifelong lover of literature, Willis spends much of her time these days performing a juggling act. But the many metaphorical objects in the air for Willis are not balls but book projects. At last count, Willis, a bestselling author, illustrator, and graphic designer, was balancing at least 10 projects at various stages of the publishing process. So far in a career that is just taking off, the Berwick alum already has published the graphic novel “Smaller Sister” with Roaring Brook/Macmillan and released her first picture book, “Little Ghost Makes a Friend,” with Paula Wiseman Books/Simon & Schuster. What’s perhaps most impressive is that Willis not only conceives the stories, but also designs and illustrates them, making her a publishing triple treat.

Born in St. Louis, Willis moved to Maine with her family at age 11 and joined the Berwick community as a sixth grader. Although she knew she wanted books to be part of her future from a young age, Willis did not yet know how. At Berwick, she discovered a talent for drawing and painting, with encouragement from many mentors, including Director of Visual and Performing Arts Raegan Russell, and deepened her writing skills with help from English teacher Patrick Connolly, among other faculty. She founded the student literary and arts magazine, The Vernacular, and went on to study art and art history at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I always wanted to do something with books, but was open to figuring out what form that would take,” says Willis, who now lives in Poughkeepsie, New York, with her husband and three-year-old son. “Looking back, my path feels very linear, but it didn’t feel that way at the time. I really liked that I could explore art and literature at Berwick and get as interested in both as I possibly could. For a long time, I considered myself more of an artist than a writer, and it took a little while for me to have more confidence in my writing skills, but I started building those in my time at Berwick.”

Out of college, Willis got a job in the art department for Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, working her way up from assistant to the creative director to senior designer, art directing and designing children’s books. Through working with illustrators on those projects, she knew she was attracted to the field, but “wasn’t sure being an illustrator was a viable career. I read every book I worked on and started to think about ideas and that maybe I should trust my skills and give it a shot.”

Since taking that shot, finding an agent, and publishing “Smaller Sister,” Willis now has 12 books under contract that she expects to complete over the next five years. They run the spectrum of genre and format, from picture books to middle grade to graphic novels. Two of her upcoming works will feature the “Little Ghost” character, while two others are rhyming picture books. She recently finished sketches for her next author-illustrated graphic novel; is writing and beginning sketches for a middle grade adaptation of a graphic novel; and is starting the final art on one of her picture books.

“I’m fully booked through 2025 and part of 2026, and then I’m partially booked through 2028,” she says.

While her stories are not autobiographical, Willis draws inspiration for her creative endeavors from her own life, and the themes of her books reflect that. “Smaller Sister,” for example, mirrors Willis’s own experience of moving from St. Louis to Maine and starting at a new school. “Friendship, mental health, female relationships, and family relationships in general tend to be themes in the projects I work on,” she says, adding that while she’s drawn to writing about the social, emotional, and maturity challenges of middle school and the transition to the teenage years, in her picture books, Willis can be a bit more playful. 

The process of transforming a project from idea to finished work can be arduous, but Willis embraces it all. She starts by writing a script for her graphic novels, visualizing the panels and flow of the narrative as she writes. Once the sketches are approved by her editor, she creates the full-color final artwork, revising and editing the text as the sketches are developed. The final illustration stage is time-consuming, and Willis says it takes two to three years to complete a graphic novel. For picture books, she writes the full text first before sketching out the illustrations. She is fortunate to be living with a target audience member , as Willis is not only juggling her various projects but also balancing them with motherhood.

“My [three-year-old] son is very much a test subject for what I’m working on,” Willis says. “One of the picture books I have coming out this year, ‘Dinky the Tinysaur,’ is about a dinosaur and is dedicated to my son because he loves dinosaurs. It’s fun to see which books he’s drawn to.”

As she navigates the welcome challenges of juggling multiple book projects across multiple formats, Willis will continue working hard to ensure that the themes, characters, and stories resonate with her target age groups. One of the things that keeps her motivated is the idea of exploring the trials and experiences of children and young adults in a thoughtful manner.

 “To an adult, a friendship breakup can seem trivial, but when you’re 12, that’s your whole world,” she says. “These problems should be taken as seriously for that audience as any problem is for an older audience. I’ve always been able to see that.”