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Richard and Joe interviewed Margret McBride, literary agent and chair of the LaJolla Playhouse Board of Trustees. Margret is owner and president of the Margret McBride Literary Agency and has placed over 400 books with mainstream publishers such as Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin/Random House, Simon & Schuster, Houghton-Mifflin, Norton, Macmillan/McGraw Hill, St. Martin’s Press, John Wiley & Sons, Workman and Thomas Nelson.
Margret worked for ten years in the publishing industry, eight years in New York and two in Los Angeles prior to establishing her San Diego agency. She worked in the marketing departments of Random House and Ballantine Books in New York then as Director of Publicity at Warner Books (now Hachette Publishing). After a move to Los Angeles, she became Marketing Director of Pinnacle Books in Century City. She is a member of the Association of Authors Representatives (AAR) and the Author’s Guild. Margret previously served on the Library Board of the University of California at San Diego and under her five-year direction, the UCSD Writers Conference attracted a distinguished faculty of publishers, editors, and agents, as well as international participants.
She currently serves as Chair, La Jolla Playhouse Board of Trustees. The La Jolla Playhouse is her passion, entering her 20th year on the Playhouse Board. She believes that it’s through the arts that people thrive. She loves the impact the La Jolla Playhouse has on the San Diego community offering New York—Broadway-caliber theater at San Diego prices.
“Through creativity we can solve any problem, make our lives more interesting, and enjoy ourselves more, yet far too many people have the misbelief they aren’t creative and won’t ever become creative. That’s nonsense! Going to live theater makes you feel great when you leave the show. And that great feeling goes to a part of yourself that stays with you.”
On October 19th – 22nd the La Jolla Playhouse will host their Without Walls festival of boundary-breaking theatrical works. This year there is an added twist, the four-day festival will be staged not in the Playhouse’s UC San Diego-based theater district but in locations in and near Downtown San Diego. The partner venues include the Central Library, the New Children’s Museum, and Horton Plaza Park, as well as Border X Brewing in Barrio Logan and Bread & Salt in Logan Heights.
Margret was born in Worcester, Mass. Her late father, Charles Richardson was in the Navy, her late mother, Vera Richardson was an artist. As she grew up they moved frequently and lived in Memphis, Tennessee; Providence, Rhode Island; Naples, Italy; Norfolk, Virginia, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She was in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and when she, her mother and six sisters were evacuated, by ship to Norfolk, Virginia, returning a few months later to Guantanamo where she graduated from high school. Afterwards, she attended Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and from there entered the world of publishing in Philadelphia at Chilton Books, and then to New York, working in the Marketing and Sales Department of Random House.
Margret is married to Nevins McBride, a San Diego Real Estate Developer. She has a daughter Kimberly McBride who is a successful artist who now lives in Hailey Idaho with her husband, Allen Branch. She has three stepdaughters, who live in New York, London and Dubai–with them, she and Nevins have seven grandchildren.
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