| Birth Name: | Marvin Nathan Kaye |
| Birth Date: | 10 March 1938 |
| Birth Place: | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Death Place: | New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Novelist, editor, actor, magician |
| Genre: | Mystery, fantasy, Science fiction, horror, theatre, humor |
| Education: | Pennsylvania State University (BA, MA) |
| Children: | Terry Ellen Kaye |
Marvin Nathan Kaye (March 10, 1938 – May 13, 2021)[1] was an American mystery, fantasy, science fiction, and horror author, anthologist, and editor. He was also a magician and theater actor. Kaye was a World Fantasy Award winner and served as co-publisher and editor of Weird Tales Magazine.
Kaye was born in Philadelphia, the son of Morris and Theresa (Baroski) Kaye. He received a Bachelor of Arts in liberal arts at Penn State in 1960, as well as a Master of Arts in English literature and theater in 1962.[2]
Kaye served as a reporter for Grit Publishing Company from 1963 to 1965, an assistant managing editor for Business Travel Magazine in 1965 and a senior editor for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich from 1966 to 1970. In 1970, he went to work as a freelance writer. He was a lecturer at The New School for Social Research in New York City in 1975, taught at NYU as an adjunct professor of Creative Writing for many years beginning in 1976,[2] and taught as an adjunct professor at Mercy College from 2001 to 2006.
As a magician and mentalist, Kaye often performed under the stage name Count Emkay the Miraculous. His book, The Stein and Day Handbook of Magic is considered an essential part of any magician's library. He also wrote The Handbook of Mental Magic. In 1976, he was the magic instructor for the performing arts summer camp French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, which he used as research for his book Catalog of Magic.
As an actor, Kaye appeared on Broadway with Dame Edna, off-Broadway with Keir Dullea in the critically-acclaimed Strings and in many shows with The Open Book, including the a cappella musical The Hoboken Chicken Emergency, which he adapted for the stage. He was an improvisational comedian, appearing periodically at Standup New York. He also performed regularly at the Jekyll & Hyde Club.[3] He can be heard portraying several characters in The Open Book audiobook Take My Planet, Please! (Metamorphic Press/JestMaster Audio, 2021).
In 1975, Kaye co-founded The Open Book, New York City's first and longest lived readers theatre company, along with his wife, Saralee, and other noted theatre professionals. Kaye also established The Open Book's educational outreach division and curriculum, as well as an annual national playwriting competition co-sponsored by Doubleday's Stage & Screen Book Club. Kaye wrote two books about readers theatre: Readers Theatre: What It Is, How to Stage It, published in 1995 by Wildside Press; and From Page to Stage: Selecting and Adapting Literature for Readers Theatre, published 1996 by Fireside Theatre. He also edited Frantic Comedy: 8 Plays of Knockabout Fun, published 1993 by Fireside Theatre. Several of the plays were presented by The Open Book under Kaye's direction.
The Open Book performed Kaye's adaptation of his own novel, The Last Christmas Of Ebenezer Scrooge, annually for several years.[4] Kaye's final stage performances were in the revival of The Last Christmas Of Ebenezer Scrooge in a short run of the play, also directed by Kaye, in December 2019 at the Pushkin Hall Theater in NYC.
Kaye authored nineteen novels including the science fiction cult classics, The Incredible Umbrella and (co-authored with Parke Godwin) The Masters of Solitude, and the critically-acclaimed mysteries Bullets for Macbeth and My Son, the Druggist. Kaye's last book, published in 2020 by Metamorphic Press, was Quest for the Pastried Peach, his own whimsical retelling of the famous "Siberian Peach Pie" shaggy joke, which he wrote in a different literary style for each chapter. A collection of Kaye's poetry is planned for posthumous publication by Metamorphic Press.
Kaye edited numerous genre anthologies such as Fiends and Creatures and The Game is Afoot, as well as magazines such as H. P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, and Black Cat Mystery Magazine. As a charter member of The Wolfe Pack, a literary society devoted to Nero Wolfe (the detective created by Rex Stout), Kaye compiled selected essays and stories from the group's journal, The Gazette, into two books in 2005, The Nero Wolfe Files and The Archie Goodwin Files. One of his anthologies, The Fair Folk, won a World Fantasy Award in 2006.[5] In the summer of 2011, Kaye purchased America's oldest supernatural periodical (dating back to 1923), Weird Tales Magazine, with John Harlacher.[6] Kaye was editor and co-publisher (with Harlacher). In addition to other artistic changes, Kaye instituted themed issues.
In August 2012, Kaye announced that Weird Tales was going to publish an excerpt from Victoria Foyt's controversial novel Save the Pearls, which many critics accused of featuring racist stereotyping.[7] Kaye wrote an essay titled "A Thoroughly NONRACIST Novel" defending his decision to publish the excerpt.[8] The essay and Kaye's decision to publish the excerpt were criticized, particularly by N. K. Jemisin[9] and Jim C. Hines,[10] and the publisher subsequently announced that Weird Tales no longer had plans to run the excerpt.[11]
Kaye was also a regular columnist, writing "Marvin Kaye's Nth Dimension" for Space and Time, a science fiction magazine.[12]
Kaye was a member of the Authors Guild, the Dramatists Guild of America, the Actors' Equity Association, The Broadway League, and The Sons of the Desert (of which he served as president from 1974 to 1976). He was also an honorary member of the Mark Twain Society.
Kaye married Saralee Bransdorf on August 4, 1963, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; they had one child, Terry Ellen Kaye.[13] Saralee Kaye died July 12, 2006, of complications from endometrial cancer in New York City. The couple resided in New York.[2] Marvin Kaye died of natural causes on May 13, 2021, in New York.[14] He is buried in the Sanctuary of Abraham & Sarah Mausoleum in Paramus, New Jersey.
The novel A Cold Blue Light is sometimes listed as a third volume of the trilogy, but it is unrelated. The third volume, Singer Among the Nightingales was not published before the death of Parke Godwin.