Interviews

Sarah Beth Durst was born Sarah Beth Angelini on May 23, 1974, in Northboro MA. She attended Princeton University, graduating in 1996 with a degree in English with a concentration in theater and dance. She lived in England with her husband-to-be for a year, then returned to Massachusetts, and eventually settled in Stony Brook NY.

Durst writes fantasy for adults, young adults, and children. Her debut novel, middle-grade Into the ...Read More

JASPER FFORDE was born January 11, 1961 in London. After graduating from Dartington Hall School, he worked in the film industry as a focus puller and cinematographer for nearly 20 years before becoming a novelist. His bestselling novels are “a joyful blend of Comedy-SF-thriller-Crime-Satire,” and his fans gather every May in Swindon, England for the annual “Fforde Ffiesta” celebrating his work.

Debut novel The Eyre Affair, a comic fantasy ...Read More

SHANNON CHAKRABORTY was born December 7, 1985 in New Jersey. She studied international relations and Middle Eastern history at American University before moving to Brooklyn to work in a medical office. While working in healthcare, she joined the Brooklyn Speculative Fictions Writers group and began developing her craft with early stories set in the world that would become the Daevabad trilogy, an epic political fantasy inspired by medieval Islamic history. ...Read More

LEIGH BARDUGO was born April 6, 1975 in Jerusalem, Israel, and grew up in Southern California. She attended Yale University, graduating with an English degree in 1997, and worked various jobs, including as a copywriter, journalist, and make-up and special effects artist.

Her debut YA novel Shadow and Bone, an epic fantasy, appeared in 2012, and began the Shadow and Bone trilogy that continued with Siege and Storm (2013) ...Read More

DEREK STÉPHANE KÜNSKEN was born March 13, 1971 in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. He attended the University of Guelph as an undergraduate and earned a master’s degree in molecular biology at McMaster University, but he left science behind to work with street children in Honduras. After returning to Canada he worked various jobs until he joined the Canadian Federal Public Service, working on refugee and diplomatic postings in Colombia ...Read More

Kathleen Dolan Jennings was born May 26, 1980 in Brisbane, Australia, and spent much of her childhood on a small cattle station in Western Queensland. She attended the University of Queensland, and worked as a lawyer for ten years (five in private practice, five for the government) before shifting her focus to illustration and writing. She recently submitted her dissertation for a MPhil degree on Australian Gothic literature.

Jennings has ...Read More

Charles Vess was born June 10, 1951 in Lynchburg VA. He attended Virginia Commonwealth University, graduating in 1974 with a BFA, and worked in commercial animation until moving to New York City in 1976. There he became a freelance illustrator, working for many publications including Heavy Metal, Klutz Press and National Lampoon. For over 10 years he worked for various comic book publishers, including Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse. He ...Read More

Rebecca Marie Chambers was born in 1985 in Southern California and grew up outside Los Angeles before relocat­ing at 18 to study theater at the University of San Francisco. She worked in theater for years before becoming a freelance writer, and spent time in Iceland and Scotland before returning to California, where she lives now with her wife, Berglaug Asmundardottir.

Chambers crowdfunded her debut novel The Long Way to a ...Read More

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON was born March 23, 1952 in Waukegan IL, and grew up in Orange County CA. He earned a BA in literature from UC San Diego in 1974, a master’s in English from Boston University in 1975, and a PhD in literature from UC San Diego in 1982. He went to Clarion in 1975. His doctoral thesis was revised and published as The Novels of Philip K. Dick ...Read More

Andrew Robert Duncan was born September 21, 1964 in Columbia SC. He earned a BA in journalism from the University of South Carolina in 1986, and worked as a reporter and editor for seven years. He entered North Carolina State University’s graduate English program, studying under John Kessel and earning his MA in 1995. He attended Clarion West in 1994, and received his MFA in fiction from the University of ...Read More

Kate Elliott is the pen name for Alis A. Rasmussen, born July 27, 1958 in Des Moines IA. She studied at University College of North Wales – Bangor and at Mills College in Oakland CA, graduating with a BA in English in 1980. In 1985 she married Jay Silverstein; they have three children. Elliott has lived in Hawaii for the past 16 years.

Debut novel The Labyrinth Gate appeared as ...Read More

Nora K. Jemisin was born September 19, 1972 in Iowa City IA, and grew up spending summers in New York City and the rest of the year in Mobile AL. She studied psychology at Tulane in New Orleans, and went to grad school to study counseling at the Uni­versity of Maryland-College Park. After spending ten years in Massa­chusetts, she moved to New York City, where she has lived ever since. ...Read More

REBECCA ROANHORSE was born in 1971 in Conway AR and grew up in Fort Worth TX. She received a B.A. in Religious Studies from Yale University and an M.A. in Theology from Union Theological Seminary before going on to receive a J.D. from the Univer­sity of New Mexico School of Law, specializing in Federal Indian Law. Roanhorse is of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo and African American descent, and writes “rez-based fantasy ...Read More

Kelly Robson was born July 17, 1967 in Edmonton, Alberta and grew up in Hinton, Alberta, a small town just east of the Rockies. She graduated with a degree in English from the University of Alberta. Robson married writer A.M. Dellamonica in an “outlaw” wedding in 1989, and they wed officially in 2003 when Canada legal­ized marriage equality. They lived in Van­couver until 2013, when they relocated to downtown Toronto. ...Read More

Curtis C. Chen (his middle name, Chih-Yu, is a phonetic spelling of his Chinese given name, 致宇) was born October 1, 1973 in Taiwan, and moved with his family to the US when he was five. They lived for one year in Cincinnati OH before settling in southern California. Chen attended Stanford and remained in the Bay Area after graduating in 1995, working as a software engineer at various companies, ...Read More

Martha Susan Wells was born September 1, 1964 in Fort Worth TX. She attended Texas A&M University, graduating with a BA in anthropology. She lives in College Station TX with her husband.

Her debut fantasy novel The Element of Fire (1993) began the Ile-Rien series, which includes The Death of the Necromancer (1998) and the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy The Wizard Hunters (2003), The Ships of Air (2004), and The ...Read More

FONDA LEE was born March 10, 1979 in Calgary, Canada, where she grew up, and lived in Toronto and the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Portland OR. Lee received an MBA from Stanford University, and worked as a management consultant and business strategist before leaving the corporate track to focus on her writing. She is also an experienced martial artist, with black belts in karate and kung fu. ...Read More

Laura Anne Gilman was born August 25, 1967 and grew up in New Jersey. She attended Skidmore, a liberal arts college in upstate New York, where she majored in English and history. She did internships at the Book of the Month Club and William Morrow while in college, and after graduation spent six months as an assistant at Putnam. She then made a lateral move to the Berkley Publishing Group ...Read More

Theodora Goss was born Teodóra Eszter Muszbek, September 30, 1968 in Budapest, Hungary. She left with her mother and brother at age five, and lived in Italy and Belgium before immigrating to the US when she was seven. They lived in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland before settling in Virginia. She graduated from the University of Virginia in 1990 with an English degree, then attended Harvard Law School and worked ...Read More

Jeffrey Ford was born November 8, 1955 in West Islip NY. He flunked out of community college and took various jobs until he earned enough to buy a clam boat at age 18. He worked as a clammer for several years while writing on the side, until he decided to go back to school. He returned to the same community college, then attended New York State University, Binghamton, where he ...Read More

NICK HARKAWAY is a pseudonym for Nicholas Cornwell, born November 26, 1972 in Cornwall England, son of author David Cornwell (better known by his pen name John le Carré) and editor Valérie Jane Eustace. He attended University College School in North London, and Clare College, Cambridge, where he studied philosophy and earned a degree in social and political science. An avid martial artist, he has studied Shorinji Kan Jiu Jitsu, ...Read More

ADA LOUISE GRACE PALMER was born June 9, 1981 in Washington DC. She grew up in Annapolis MD and went to college two years early, at age 16. She attended Simon’s Rock College of Bard for two years, then transferred to Bryn Mawr College, where she studied Re­naissance history. She did her PhD at Harvard, spending time studying in Florence and Rome, partly funded as a Fulbright fellow. She graduated ...Read More

Tananarive Priscilla Due was born January 5, 1966 in Tallahassee FL, daughter of civil rights lawyer John D. Due, Jr. and leading civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due. She grew up in Miami, and attended Northwestern Univer­sity’s Medill School of Journalism before getting her MA in English from Leeds University, where she studied Nigerian literature. She worked as a journalist for the Miami Herald after college, wrote full-time for 15 ...Read More

Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer was born July 7, 1968 in Belfont PA, and grew up in the Fiji Islands (where his parents worked for the Peace Corps), Ithaca NY, and Gainesville FL, where he attended the University of Florida for three years. He went to Clarion in 1992.

VanderMeer’s first story of genre interest was “Night Prayers”, ap­pearing when he was in high school in 1986; early work also appeared in ...Read More

Angela Gaye Slatter was born May 16, 1967 in Cairns Australia, and grew up mostly there and in Brisbane and Ipswich. She studied French and history at the University of Queensland, later earned a master’s, and received a PhD in creative writing in 2012. She attended Clarion South in 2009, Tin House in 2006 and has taught writing at vari­ous writers’ centres, universities and festivals.

Slatter’s short fiction is highly ...Read More

Grandmaster James Gunn continues to amaze with his level of productivity and commitment to science fiction as he approaches age 95.

The 2017 Campbell Conference, held at the University of Kansas June 16-18, featured a celebration of Gunn and his life in science fiction. A number of Gunn’s former students, including Pat Cadigan, Bradley Denton, Karen Hellekson, Kij Johnson, Christopher McKitterick, John Ordover, Michael R. Page, Nate Williams, Sheila Williams, ...Read More

Carrie Vaughn was born January 28, 1973 in Sacramento CA to a military family, and grew up all over the country before settling in Colorado, where she graduated high school. She attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, and got her Master’s in English Literature at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She attended the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 1998, and taught there in 2009. Vaughn began publishing  short fiction in ...Read More

John Michael Crowley was born December 1, 1942 in Presque Isle ME, where his father, a doctor and captain in the Army Air Corps, was stationed. The family moved several times, settling in Indiana in 1953 when his father took a position as a doctor at Notre Dame. Crowley attended Indiana University, earning a degree in English in 1964. He moved to New York and worked as a photographer’s assistant, ...Read More

JY Yang was born July 12, 1983 in Singapore. They studied molecular biology and worked as a research scientist before becoming a writer for animation and game studios, and they also worked in journalism and as a science communicator for Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology, and Research.

Yang began publishing stories in the small press in 2011 with “Captain Bells and The Sovereign State of Discordia” in The Ste­ampowered Globe ...Read More

MICHAEL LOUIS ALLEN was born Febru­ary 1, 1969 in Minneapolis MN to academic parents, who moved often for teaching jobs. He lived in Guam until after kindergarten, spent a year outside Chicago, then spent eight years in the small mining town of Wise VA before finally settling in Roanoke VA, where he has lived ever since. He graduated from Virginia Tech with a liberal arts degree, then earned his Master’s ...Read More