Palacký University in Olomouc Philosophical

School Years and University

Martin attended Mary Jane Donohoe School, a grade school four blocks away from his home. He graduated in 1962 and he was the class valedictorian. He continued his studies in a Catholic prep school – Marist High, a boy’s school. According to Martin these four years were not the happiest years in his life, because there were other things besides his studies he loved more. On his official website we says: “Aside from discovering that I had absolutely no gift for foreign languages (I struggled mightily in both Latin and French), I did well enough with the academics, but my real passion were for chess, comic books, and writing.”¹⁵ For two years he had been writing and editing for the school paper, until a censorship dispute in his senior year. During his high school years he got involved in the comic fandom and began publishing amateur superhero stories in fanzines. He graduated from Marist High School in 1966.

For the college he chose Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois despite the fact he had been accepted at several local schools. But this was the first opportunity for young George to fulfil his traveling dreams, to see some other part of the world, and he took it. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism in 1970, graduating “summa cum laude” (with highest honor). He completed his studies a year later when he received a Master of Science degree, also from the Northwestern University. During his last year of studies he began selling his short





¹⁴ “Lunch with the FT: George RR Martin,” Financial Times, accessed August 15, 2016, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/bd1e2638-a8b7-11e1-a747-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1wYzURCl0. ¹⁵ “Bayonne.“
stories professionally – his first sale was a story named “The Hero” which he sold to Galaxy magazine.

3. Chicago and Dubuque

After his graduation Martin moved to Chicago where he lived from 1971 to 1975 in a three-bedroom apartment with an “ever-changing cast of roomies”.¹⁶ He did two years of alternative service, working as a volunteer assigned to the Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation, which provided aid to the poor. Since his degrees were in journalism his job was to edit their newsletter and write their press release. During this time he met his first love Lisa Tuttle, a college student from University in Syracuse, New York. They fell in love at the 1973 Worldcon in Toronto, but since Lisa lived in Los Angeles they were only corresponding and visiting each other from time to time. They became collaborators and lovers, until Lisa fell in love with someone else in 1974 and ended their short romance. However, they did not stop writing to each other and remain friends to this day.

In the same year he met his future wife Gale Burnick, it was a Worldcon meeting again, this time in Washington, D.C. She moved from Philadelphia to Martin’s shared apartment, but she did not like living with all the roommates so they soon moved to their own flat. Martin was happy he was finally having his own office, it was a place where he wrote his first novel Dying of the Light. He and Gale married in November 1975 after a little more than a year of living together. Martin was trying to make money for living out of selling his stories, but those were only short stories and the income was not enough. Also his wife wanted to go back to college and finish her degree, so for the first time in his life he had to take a day job. He was hired as a journalism teacher by Clarke College, a small Catholic women’s college in Dubuque, Iowa. The department consisted of him and his friend Charlie Ellis only, his job was to teach the print journalism courses and he was also the faculty advisor to the student newspaper The Courier.
In 1976 George and Gale moved into the first house he had ever owned, in an old house in Dubuque, Iowa. They had to fix some parts of the house, but in the end they were happy with the results. While teaching the journalism courses George



¹⁶ “Chicago,“ George Raymond Richard Martin, accessed August 15, 2016, http://georgerrmartin.com/life/chicago.html.
had to teach some for the English department as well, because the journalism department was not large enough to have two full-time faculty members. He taught the “Freshman Composition” and the “Science Fiction Literature” courses – he hated the first one but loved the second one, because it gave him “a great excuse for rereading a dozen or so of [his] favorite novels, and also allowed [him] to bring some actual science-fiction writers to campus to talk to [his] class”.¹⁷
His wife Gale graduated from Clarke College in 1979, in a time George was ready to become a full-time writer. He came to love Dubuque with its hills and old Victorian houses, but Gale hated the weather conditions, so they decided to move to New Mexico. They chose Santa Fe, because they fell in love with it a year ago while driving to the Worldcon in Phoenix. But while she moved there sooner, George had to stay to finish the semester and their separation and the stress of moving eventually caused them to be divorced soon after, with no children. After that George moved into a house he had never seen before and Gale moved out to Minneapolis.

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