Interviews

Ian Neil McDonald was born March 31, 1960 in Manchester England. He moved to Northern Ireland at age five and has lived there ever since. He attended Bangor Grammar School and worked as head of development for a TV production company.

McDonald began publishing SF with ‘‘The Island of the Dead’’ (1982), and his stories soon began to appear regularly in Asimov’s, Interzone, and other magazines. His novels include Locus

Ann Leckie was born March 2, 1966 in Toledo OH and grew up in St. Louis MO. She attended Washington University, graduating with a degree in music. She has ‘‘worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer.’’

Leckie attended Clarion West in 2005, where she wrote first published SF story ‘‘Hesperia and Glory’’ (2006). Over a dozen stories have appeared since, including

Kevin Wayne Jeter was born March 26, 1950 in Los Angeles. He attended California State University of Fullerton with classmates Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock, where he also met his wife Geri, and graduated with a degree in sociology. During the ’70s he became friends with his literary hero, Philip K. Dick. Since then he has led ‘‘the ramshackle writer life,’’ residing up and down the West Coast until

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 ‘‘So the Dead Walk Slowly’’, appearing when he was in college in 1989. His first book

Eileen Katherine Gunn was born June 23, 1945 in Dorchester MA and grew up south of Boston. She attended Emmanuel College, a Catholic college, earning a BA (1967) in History with a minor in English, began working as an advertising copywriter, then moved to California to pursue fiction writing. In 1976 she attended Clarion, and afterward wrote while supporting herself by working in advertising. She was an early employee

Joseph Edward Abercrombie was born on New Year’s Eve 1974 in Lancaster England and lived there until going to the University of Manchester, where he studied psychology. He moved to London and worked in television until taking up prose writing in his mid-twenties.

Though he sometimes publishes short fiction, Abercrombie is best known for his gritty, complex ‘‘grimdark’’ epic fantasy novels. His debut The Blade Itself (2006) was shortlisted for

George Saunders was born December 2, 1958 in Amarillo TX and grew up outside Chicago, attending high school in Oak Forest IL. He earned a BS in geophysical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden CO in 1981, working in Sumatra as a field geophysicist for a year and a half before returning home and working various jobs, including as a doorman, roofer, clerk, and slaughterhouse worker. In

Kathleen Ann Goonan was born May 14, 1952 in Cincinnati OH. At age eight she moved to Hawaii for two years while her father worked for the Navy, after which the family moved to Washington DC. She got a degree in English from Virginia Tech in 1975, and earned her Association Montessori International Certification in 1976. She taught school for 13 years, ten of those at Montessori schools, including eight

Amish Tripathi was born October 18, 1974 in Mumbai, India. He grew up in the eastern part of the country and went to boarding school in Tamil Nadu, in Southern India, before returning to Mumbai for high school and college. He got his MBA at the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, and worked in finance for 15 years.

Amish writes in English, and began self-publishing his Shiva trilogy in

Daryl Jon Gregory was born June 26, 1965 in Illinois, grew up in Darien IL, and attended college at Illinois State University, graduating with a double major in English and Theater. He taught high school for a few years, became a technical writer, and is now a part-time programmer.

In 1988 Gregory attended the Clarion workshop, where he wrote ‘‘In the Wheels’’, his first publication, which appeared in F&SF in

Paul Cornell was born July 18, 1967, in the West Country of Britain. He got his start as a writer doing Doctor Who tie-in work, producing a number of novels starting in 1991. Beginning in the mid-’90s he also wrote for various British television programs, including Doctor Who; he scripted the Hugo Award nominated episodes ‘‘Father’s Day’’ (2005) and the two-part ‘‘Human Nature’’/’’The Family of Blood’’ (2006), the latter

Joan Slonczewski was born August 14, 1956 and raised in Westchester County NY, daughter of a theoretical physicist and a violin teacher. She decided to become a scientist at an early age, and attended Bryn Mawr, graduating with a biology degree in 1977. She finished her PhD in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale in 1982, and did postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1984 she began teaching

Terence David John Pratchett was born April 28, 1948 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, UK. His first story, ‘‘The Hades Business’’, appeared in his high school magazine when he was 13, and was reprinted in Science-Fantasy two years later (1963). He left school to become a journalist, worked for various newspapers for several years, followed by eight years as a press officer in the nuclear power industry (1980-87), while writing and publishing

Stina Leicht was born March 29, 1962 in St. Louis MO. She attended Sam Houston State University and the University of Houston, and returned to school to study 3D animation at Austin Community College in 2003, graduating in 2006. She has worked as a graphic designer, a bookseller, and in the gaming industry, and has been a full-time writer and freelancer since 2005.

Her debut novel Of Blood and Honey

Hugh Crocker Howey was born June 23, 1975 near Charlotte NC. He moved to Charleston SC after high school, where he worked and attended college. He spent several years traveling the world working on boats, and worked as a roofer and in a bookstore before becoming a full-time writer.

Howey began publishing in the small press with the first book in the Molly Fyde/Bern Saga: Molly Fyde and the Parsona

Tanya Sue Huff was born September 26, 1957 in Halifax, Novia Scotia and grew up in Kingston, Ontario. She made her first sale at age ten – two poems to The Picton Gazette. She joined the Canadian Naval Reserve, where she served as a cook from 1975-79. She attended Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, graduating in 1982 with a degree in Radio and Television Arts, part of the same graduating

Steven Charles Gould was born February 7, 1955 in Arizona. His father was an Army officer, and Gould spent much of his childhood traveling the world. He studied physics at Texas A&M University, but left before finishing a degree, and worked various jobs in the oil industry and later in computer consulting. He married fellow writer Laura J. Mixon in 1989.

First story ‘‘The Touch of Their Eyes’’ appeared in

Sheila Elizabeth Williams was born September 27, 1956 in Springfield MA. She grew up in western Massachusetts and attended Elmira College in upstate New York, doing a year abroad at the London School of Economics, and graduating in 1978 with a degree in philosophy. She earned her master’s degree in philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis MO in 1982.

Williams began working in the magazine business in 1981, first

Gwendolyn Willow Wilson was born August 31, 1982 in Longbranch NJ and grew up in Colorado. She attended Boston University, where she studied history with a focus on the Middle East. After graduation, she taught at an English-language school in Cairo for a semester, then began working there as a journalist, writing primarily about the Middle East. Her journalism has appeared in Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, and

Scott Lynch was born April 2, 1978 in St. Paul MN. He has worked as a dishwasher, waiter, web designer, office manager, and is currently a full-time writer and volunteer firefighter. He was married in 2006 and divorced in 2010. Author Elizabeth Bear is now his partner.

Lynch began publishing with World Fantasy Award finalist The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), first in a projected seven volumes of the Gentleman

John Anthony Skillingstead was born October 24, 1955 in a working-class suburb of Seattle WA. He attended community college from 1974-76 before dropping out to work in a cannery in Alaska. He also lived a year in Maine, where he eventually returned to marry Kathy Scanlon in 1985; they later divorced, but have two adult children. In 2011, he married fellow SF writer Nancy Kress. They live in Seattle, where

Nalo Hopkinson was born December 20, 1960 in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up there and in Trinidad and Guyana, though she also spent some time in the US as a child. Her father was noted Guyanese poet Muhammad Abdur-Rahman Slade Hopkinson. She moved with her family to Toronto, Canada in 1977, where she lived until relocating to Riverside CA in 2011. She earned a Master’s degree in Writing Popular Fiction

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. His doctoral thesis was revised and published as The Novels of Philip K. Dick (1984). He lived in Switzerland and

Aliette de Bodard was born November 10, 1982 in New York City to a Vietnamese mother and a French father. At age one she moved with her family to Paris, France, where she has lived apart from two years in London as a teenager. She attended the École Polytechnique, graduating in 2002 with a degree in applied mathematics, electronics, and computer science. She speaks both French and English fluently, and

Maria Dahvana Headley was born June 21, 1977 in Estacada OR. She attended NYU, where she studied dramatic writing. She lived in Seattle for many years before returning to New York, where she lives now.

Headley’s first book was memoir The Year of Yes (2006), chronicling a year in which she said ‘‘yes’’ to every person who asked her on a date. Her debut novel, Queen of Kings (2011), is

Neil Richard Gaiman was born November 10, 1960 in Porchester, England. He attended school in southern England before moving to London, where he worked as a freelance journalist in the early ’80s. His first stories sold to gaming and men’s magazines in 1984 and ’85, and his first work in the SF field was Ghastly Beyond Belief, a book of humorous SF quotations (1985, with Kim Newman). His career

Rudolf von Bitter Rucker was born March 22, 1946 in Louisville KY. He attended Swarthmore, earning a BA in mathematics in 1967, and did graduate work at Rutgers, studying mathematical logic and set theory, and getting a Master’s in 1969 and a PhD in 1973.

Rucker’s novels include Spacetime Donuts (1978); White Light (1980); the Ware series, which includes Philip K. Dick Award winners Software (1982) and Wetware (1988), plus

Teresa Nielsen Hayden was born Teresa Nielsen on March 21, 1956 in Chamberlain SD, and grew up in Arizona. She became active in fandom in the mid 1970s,and with her husband Patrick co-edited the Hugo Award-nominated fanzine Izzard from 1982-87. They both served on the editorial board of The Little Magazine from 1985-88 and helped found The New York Review of Science Fiction in 1988. She has worked in many

Timothy Thomas Powers was born in Buffalo NY on February 29, 1952 (he only gets a birthday during leap years). He moved with his family to Southern California when he was seven and has lived there ever since. He attended California State University Fullerton, graduating with a BA in English in 1976. While in college he became friends with James P. Blaylock and K.W. Jeter, and all three spent time

Terry Ballantine Bisson was born February 12, 1942 in Kentucky. After attending Grinnell College in Iowa from 1960-62, and batting around LA and NY, he received a BA from the University of Louisville in 1964. In 1962, he married Deirde Holst, mother of his two sons and daughter; they divorced in 1966. From 1966-70 he lived in New York with second wife Mary Corey, scripting comics and saucer tales for