M. D. Payne

M. D. Payne was born in 1978 to an Air Force Family and grew up in 11 different homes in Maine, California, Idaho, Florida, Virginia, Ohio, and Germany. As a child, he was a ravenous reader. While in elementary school, his favorite past-time was creating cut-and-paste scrapbooks of presidential facts that remain in his mother's possession today. His first published work was "Creatures of the Night," a short story which appeared in the Idaho Statesman newspaper when he was in the 9th grade.

M. D. remained a fan of Halloween and horror into adulthood, so he jumped at the chance to write marketing and creative copy for the famed GOOSEBUMPS series in 2007, and was soon pulled into the world of kidlit. He wrote his first books, the gross-out horror series MONSTER JUICE, and then became involved in the NY Times bestselling WHO WAS series, initially tackling spooky titles like "Who Is R. L. Stine?" and "What is the Story of Scooby-Doo?"

Before M. D. was a writer, he was a Jazz DJ, wrote scripts for Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio, and was associate producer on Essentially Ellington recordings and public radio programs such as "Honky Tonks, Hymns, and the Blues" and "W.C. Handy’s Blues." He took that decade of experience and poured it into "Who Was Duke Ellington?"

He's since written "What Is the Story of Captain Kirk?" and the Mary Shelley's Frankenstein edition of YOU ARE THE CLASSICS.

A fan of kids, reading, and especially kids who read, M. D. gives presentations on reading and writing to children and teachers alike at numerous schools around the country, and around the world virtually. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children, and works in the NYC metro area as a communications specialist for independent schools.