Graeme MacQueen was born and raised in Canada. He was trained as an expert in Indian religion and in the mid-1990s, when Griffin Ondaatje decided to bring out a book of stories from ancient India re-told by contemporary authors, he asked MacQueen to contribute. So he contributed four stories to The Monkey King & Other Stories, which was published in 1995 by HarperCollins.
In the year 2000, Orient Longman chose one of MacQueen's stories for its GulMohar English reader. This made the story, "Brighter Still," available to 100,000 young people each year in India. (He was asked again in 2014 if the story could be included in Orient BlackSwan's 8th edition of the GulMohar reader.)
MacQueen also worked with several Afghan organizations in a peace-making project. Two of MacQueen's original stories were published in Afghanistan, and translated into Dari and Pashto, by UNICEF.
MacQueen was then asked to write an original book-length story for young readers. The result was Journey to the City of Six Gates.
