Program Participant Biographies, Continued

Kevin Standlee

Kevin Standlee was co-Chair of ConJosé, the 2002 Worldcon. He is a director of SFSFC, Inc., parent corporation of the 2002 and 1993 Worldcons, and CanSMOF, parent corporation of the 2009 Worldcon.

Kevin's first SF convention was the 1984 Worldcon. Since then he has worked on conventions in a variety of roles from gopher to Worldcon Chairman. He was Fan Guest of Honor at the 2005 NASFiC.

Kevin is an expert on the official rules of the Worldcon and Westercon. His other hobbies include a love of trains and rail transit. Kevin works as a logistics solutions engineer for Menlo Worldwide, a supply-chain management company headquartered in San Mateo, California.

In addition to his panels he can usually be found at the head table of the Business Meeting or wearing his "WSFS Captain" uniform, which he first donned as part of the "Spaceport Glasgow" theme of the 2005 Worldcon. He regularly updates his LiveJournal.
Return to Index

Larry Hodges

Larry Hodges, of Germantown, MD, is an active member of SFWA with an even 20 short story sales. He's a graduate of the six-week 2006 Odyssey Writers' Workshop, the 2007 Orson Scott Card Literary Boot Camp, and the 2008 Taos Toolbox Writers' Workshop. His story "Ghosts of Cretaceous Park" is featured in the current (second quarter 2008) issue of Abyss & Apex.

Hodges has a master's in journalism and a bachelor's in math, with minors in chemistry and computer science. He has three books and over 1100 published articles in 76 different publications. Said Hodges, "My best writing tends to be humorous SF and fantasy, yet I didn't really sell much until I focused on first choosing a clear theme, and then satirizing it."

He's also a member of the USA Table Tennis Hall of Fame - really! (http://www.usatt.org/organization/halloffame/index.html) He's been a professional table tennis coach for many years, and was a professional player at one time.

He is currently working on his first novel. Visit him at www.larryhodges.org.
Return to Index

Laurel Anne Hill

Laurel Anne Hill is the author of Heroes Arise (KOMENAR Publishing), which she describes as "her debut parable," in October 2007. ForeWord Magazine selected Heroes Arise for its Book of the Year Award (bronze award, 2007, science fiction category). Heroes Arise also was chosen as a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

She grew up in San Francisco, with more dreams of adventure than good sense or money. "I read The Martian Chronicles, Dune and "Stranger in a Strange Land long before I read War and Peace or Of Time and the River. Yet I first had read Pride and Prejudice, The Count of Monte Cristo and many other classics, and not as school assignments," she recalled. "The local library was my refuge. In childhood, I used imaginary friends to cope and survive. In my teens, novels carried me to the imaginary places I craved. Now, my imaginary friends have returned to serve as characters in my stories."

Hill's shorter fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in the Contra Costa Times, Nth Zine, Lynx Eye, the San Jose Mercury News, Space and Time, and a variety of small-circulation magazines. In 2005, she was awarded first prize in the Ninth Annual Captivating Beginnings Short Story Contest. She received an honorable mention in the 2004 Soul-Making Literary Competition, an extended community arts outreach program of the National League of American Pen Women, Nob Hill, San Francisco Bay Area Branch.

Hill earned B.A and M.S. degrees in Biology. Her various occupations in the health care industry have involved medical technology, nuclear medicine technology, pharmaceutical technical services, drug regulatory affairs, environmental health & safety and diesel. She adds, "Please don't ask me to understand Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. There is a good reason why I chose biology and environmental health & safety as a career instead of physics."

Her close brushes with death, love of family, respect for honor and belief in a higher power continue to influence her writing and life.

You can visit her website: www.laurelannehill.com
Return to Index

Lisa Spangenberg

Lisa Spangenberg grew up in rural New Hampshire, and kept moving West in search of more to read, eventually earning a Ph.D. in English from UCLA, before relocating to Seattle. Her academic area of specialization is medieval English and Celtic languages and literatures, particularly texts about otherworld folk and their interactions with mortals.

She's been a reader of SF and Fantasy for most of her life, and, not surprisingly, ended up studying medieval fantasy at university. Her academic area of specialization is medieval English and Celtic languages and literatures, particularly texts about otherworld folk and their interactions with mortals. She added, "If I had to pick a favorite author I'd say Anonymous, followed by C. J. Cherryh."

She is the first digital medievalist on the Web, working for e-book and multimedia pioneer Voyager, Callipe Media, and helping university faculty incorporate digital technology in their teaching and research. Said Spangenberg, "People are sometimes puzzled by the idea of a medievalist working so very closely with digital technology, but the combination of digital technology and medieval studies isn't as unusual as you might think. We medievalists are surprisingly technologically savvy; there's a lot you can do with a scanner, some manuscripts and a computer."

Her latest publication is her dissertation: The Games Fairies Play: Otherworld Intruders in Medieval English and Celtic Literary Narratives. She also contributed several articles to The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. She serves as a sys admin at Written in Stone, a forum for readers who like to write (http://www.macallisterstone.com/forums).

Her website including reviews, Celtic studies and her blog is at http://www.digitalmedievalist.com.
Return to Index

Lucienne Diver

Lucienne Diver is a fifteen-year veteran of the publishing business. She began as an agent at the prestigious Spectrum Literary Agency and has recently moved to The Knight Agency (www.knightagency.net).

Her interest in books came naturally. She said, "I'm a voracious reader and grew up reading anything from Conan Doyle to Mary Stewart to Isaac Asimov." As an agent, she represents over forty authors of science fiction, fantasy, mystery/suspense and romance and is a member of AAR, SFWA, RWA and MWA. "In general I'm more of a fantasy gal than sf, with a lot of exceptions, " she explained. "I also handle paranormal romance, where the boundaries with urban fantasy have been blurring."

Lucienne Diver is also a published author under her pseudonym Kit Daniels. 2009 marks her debut under her own name with the YA novel Vamped from Flux.

Check out the website for Lucienne Diver (and Vamped) at http://www.luciennediver.com/default.html
Return to Index

Marc Scott Zicree

Marc Scott Zicree has hundreds of hours as a writer/producer of network TV to his name, including Star Trek — TNG, Star Trek — Deep Space Nine ("Far Beyond the Stars"), Babylon 5, Sliders, Forever Knight and even Smurfs. He has had bestsellers in fiction and non-fiction, notably the Magic Time trilogy of novels and his classic Twilight Zone Companion (recently named by the New York Times as one of ten science fiction books "for the ages").

Marc has served on staff on four series: most recently, as a producer on Sliders, as co-producer on Lazarus Man, executive story editor on Beyond Reality, and story editor on Friday the 13th — The Series. Additionally, Marc was a commentator for three years on NPR's Morning Edition. One of the country's leading experts on media, he has appeared on dozens of radio and TV shows, including American Masters, All Things Considered, A&E's Biography, Entertainment Tonight, E! True Hollywood Story and the Today show.

His most recent project was co-writing, directing and executive producing the Star Trek New Voyages episode "World Enough and Time," starring George Takei, which won the TV Guide Award and which has been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula.
Return to Index

Michelle Sagara West

Michelle Sagara West was born, raised and has mostly lived in Toronto, Ontario. She's worked since 1986 in one capacity or another at Bakka, a SF/F specialty store, now Bakka-Phoenix, through two different owners. She and her "very, very understanding husband (a necessary quality in the spouse of a writer)," have two sons, ages ten and fifteen.

Sagara West, a 1992 Campbell Award nominee, started her first novel, Into the Dark Lands, in 1986, which was eventually published by Del Rey books at the tail end of 1991. Children of the Blood, Lady of Mercy and Chains of Darkness, Chains of Light followed, closing her first series at four books. Those books were subsequently reprinted by BenBella books, as Michelle Sagara West.

She wrote four books for Luna as Michelle Sagara: Cast in Shadow, Cast in Courtlight, Cast in Secret and the forthcoming Cast in Fury and nine books for DAW as Michelle West. Her first book in The House War series, The Hidden City, also her first hardcover, was published this year.

Michelle Sagara has just finished her first YA novel. She's still casting about for a perfect title.

"I have far too many books, and a constant lack of shelf space; no matter what I do, books sneak into the house and slowly spread out on every available surface. I love, and have always loved, reading--I think that's probably the single biggest motivator in my decision to try to write novels." Besides reading, Sagara West works part-time, parents and writes novels. She says, "The state of my house reflects this."

Her other interests, when time allows are: anime, manga, WOW, Firefly, Buffy, bookselling and typesetting. She also writes F/SF book reviews. She identifies herself as a feminist.
Return to Index

Pati Nagle

Pati Nagle lives in the mountains of New Mexico. An avid student of music, history, and humans in general, she has a special love of the outdoors, particularly New Mexico's wilds, which inspire many of her stories.

Her work has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Cricket, Cicada, and various anthologies including collections honoring New Mexico writers Jack Williamson and Roger Zelazny. Her fantasy short story Coyote Ugly, was honored as a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. Her new Ælven fantasy novel, The Betrayal, will be released by Del Rey in March, 2009.
Return to Index

Peri Charlifu

Peri Charlifu is a master potter and extremely talented craftsman and artist. Years ago, I was a member of a family of potters who owned Marshall Pottery, a seventy-year old business distributing their products worldwide. I've seen the accumulated skills of potters who have perfected their craft over forty years or more, and in Peri, I recognized the same level of mastery.

Peri knows his market. I've been a contributing artist at SF conventions for over thirty years, and I recognize someone who not only knows what fantasy fans like, but is able to tailor to the craft show market as well. My personal favorite is his work based upon the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. I've purchased over twenty pieces for my home and always look to see if he's done something new along these lines.

Peri routinely shows more than a hundred pieces at SF conventions. It's easy to see that not only is he talented, but is also fast and reliable. I've seen art show demonstrations in which Peri has constructed huge and beautiful creations in less than an hour. To me, there is no better mark of professionalism than an artist who can create something in front of a room full of spectators.

--Bio by David Martin

Two quotes from Peri:

Return to Index

René Walling

A fan of animation, comic books and science fiction, René Walling co-chairs Anticipation, the 67th Worldcon. He also writes for Frames Per Second magazine and has occasionally been known to work as a graphic designer.
Return to Index