Program Participant Biographies, Continued

Jo Walton

Jo Walton is originally from Wales, and moved to Montreal in 2002. This year, she became a permanent resident of Canada. She is married, and has one son. She has a degree in Ancient History from the University of Lancaster.

"I've been reading SF since I was twelve," she says, "starting by reading my way through the library SF shelf in alphabetical order." She has been involved in fandom since 1988.

Jo Walton writes both fantasy and SF. Her most recent works are the "Small Change" trilogy, Farthing (Tor 2006), Ha'penny (Tor 2007) and Half a Crown (forthcoming from Tor September 2008). She also wrote the World Fantasy Award winning Tooth and Claw (Tor 2003), and the fantasies The King's Peace, The King's Name and The Prize in the Game. Her fantasy novel Lifelode will be out from NESFA Press in February. She has just finished an as yet-untitled fantasy novel about growing up in South Wales with fairies. (The novel is finished, but she's still working on the title.) She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002. Jo is a long time reader and fan. She says "I'm very boring really, I read, write, cook, and talk about books."
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Toni Weisskopf

The road to publisher of Baen Books, a leading publisher of science fiction and fantasy, was through fandom for Toni Weisskopf. She attended her first convention in 1980, and eventurally, in 2006, she succeeded Jim Baen as publisher. She has worked with such authors as David Weber, David Drake, Lois McMaster Bujold, Eric Flint, Wen Spencer, and many others. With Josepha Sherman she compiled and annotated the definitive volume of subversive children's folklore, Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts, published by August House, now in its third printing. For Baen, she's edited three original hard sf anthologies: Cosmic Stories: Adventures in Sol System, Cosmic Stories: Adventures in Far Futures and most recently Transhuman, with science fiction author Mark L. Van Name.

Weisskopf enjoys reading things outside of science fiction and fantasy, including mysteries, history, Kipling, Twain, and, more recently, Nordic sagas.

Although she reports having a "black thumb," she is working with landscapers to fulfill her garden vision for her corner of north Georgia, informed by the landscaping of Frederick Law Olmstead, into an Olmsteadian parkland.

Baen is also known for its innovative e-publishing program, which has expanded under Weisskopf's leadership to include not only titles published by Baen, but also titles from other publishers, all without Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Weisskopf is a graduate of Oberlin College with a degree in anthropology. The widow of Southern fan and swordmaster Hank Reinhardt, she is the mother of a delightful sixteen-year old daughter, and is possessed by a truly devilish little dog, and a fat and lazy cat who styles himself a "rare white mini-puma."
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Art Widner

Arthur L. Widner, Jr. is credited with organizing the first SF fan club in Boston (The Stranger Club) in 1939. In the early days of SF fandom, he published the clubzine Fanfare from 1940-43. Widner has never missed a single Corflus conference (a fanzine fan con).

In addition to his lengthy fanzine credits, Widner was also behind the early fan conferences which became the Boskone conferences, starting in 1941. He helped the N3F get started.

Widner's WorldCon adventures include a cross-country carpool to the third Worldcon, which was the first Denvention, in 1941. In his snappy red and black 1935 Ford V8, he collected a carload of Boston area fans for the forbidding trek to Denver.

In 1943, he invented the first SF board game, Interplanetary. The game can be described as combination of a standard race game and Monopoly. Players are attempting to get to a planet and bring back a cargo in order to finance a trip to the next distant planet where a still more valuable cargo would be obtained. The difficulty is that, during the game, the planets move, making it more difficult to land. In addition, planets have such hazards as black holes and pirates. Players also have to try not to fall into a sun and avoid getting hit with space junk. The game found quite a following at various WorldCons.

In 1946, Widner hitch-hiked to the long-postponed Pacificon. The excuse he gave to his wife was that he wanted to look over the California area for a possible move. In 1948, the couple moved to LA.

He taught college level courses on science fiction as literature for 10 years.

Widner has been the Fan Guest of Honor at numerous conventions, and he was the winner of the 1991 DUFF for a trip to Australia and New Zealand and won the Big Heart Award in 1989.
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Cordelia Willis

Cordelia Willis grew up attending science fiction conventions with her family in Colorado. While her mother was tending to "serious business" (aka writing award-winning stories), Cordelia and her science-teacher father entertained themselves at cons by entering masquerades and putting on humorous science demonstrations. Now an "adult," Cordelia is eagerly continuing these family traditions: she spends her days working as a forensic scientist at a local crime lab and spends her free time writing assorted fanfic, making costumes, and performing song-and-dance routines at masquerades and other venues.
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Courtney Willis

In his first life, Courtney Willis was a high school science teacher for 23 years. Recently, he has been a University Physics Professor, a position he's held for 17 years. Courtney enjoys collecting slide rules and fiddling with old stereo equipment.

Recently the professor has become a student, as he has been trying to migrate from Microsoft to Linux with the help of some of his students.

Willis has done science demos at two previous Worldcons and he presents annually at Mile High Con. He has also done spoofs of the science in the Weekly World News. He has participated on a number of science panels.
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Frank Wu

Frank Wu was born in Philadelphia and named after Ben Franklin. His parents thought of naming him Ben, but they though Ben Wu sounded funny.

Currently, he works as a patent agent in a law firm, helping huge pharmaceutical companies sue other huge pharmaceutical companies for ridiculous amounts of money, of which he earns but a pittance. He's won three Hugo awards for his art.

"For me, one nightmare is to make a movie. The other nightmare is to not make a movie." Wu says of his current project, which is making a short film, "The Tragical Historie of Guidolon the Giant Space Chicken" into a full-length animated film. He's hoping he'll be lucky, and that it'll only take 3 years.

Frank earned his undergrad degree in English from U. Rochester and a Ph.D. in genetics from Wisconsin.

He comments that he's "been drawing giant robots and spaceships since before "Star Wars" came out in 1977," but has only been seriously doing art for the last decade or so. He's done a great number of magazine covers, book covers and fanzine art.
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Chris Garcia

Born and raised in Santa Clara, CA, Chris Garcia has been the Assistant Curator for the Computer History Museum since 1999.

Chris began writing for fanzines in 2004 and started The Drink Tank in January 2005. He was drawn in by writing for Jan Stinson's Peregrine Nations and later by sending letters to Earl Kemp's eI. He's written more than 170 issues of The Drink Tank, several more of Claims Department, and has had articles in zines from around the world. He reports that he's up for two Hugos this year (Best Fan Writer and Best Fanzine). Last year, he came in fifth in both categories.

Chris also makes short films, working with various film festivals like Cinequest and the Sonoma Valley Film Festival. He's been active in everything from pro wrestling to comic book fandom and specializes in the history of video games.

Chris's latest venture is "Journey Planet," a new fanzine he's editing with James Bacon and Claire Brialey. Aside from continuing to publish The Drink Tank, he also writes for FanboyPlanet.com.
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SheilaMcClune

By day, Sheila McClune is a data analyst for a national membership association. The rest of the time, she is (among other things) an aspiring novelist, an amateur photographer, a reasonably good cook, a Renaissance dancer, and an herb gardener. When these things aren't keeping her busy enough, she can often be found attending (and helping at) science fiction conventions, fantasizing about being an Iron Chef, or plotting to take over the world.

An avid reader since age four and a half, Sheila has been writing since high school (though even she admits that those first efforts were pretty dreadful). She is a 2006 NaNoWriMo Winner, coming in at just over 60K words in thirty days, though it took her another three weeks and an additional 40K words to finish The Vedia Gamble, which she plans to begin to market ... right after Denvention 3 is over and she has time to think again. She was unable to participate in NaNoWriMo in 2007, but is already planning for NaNo 2008. Sheila has also completed a Regency romance, but admits that it might need "a little trimming" before she sends it out -- since it came in at over 200K words (oops!).

She loves road trips—even ones to scary places like the Inn of Las Vegas (NM), and is an enthusiastic blogger (look for her as arwensouth on LiveJournal). In her Copious Spare Time^TM, she is also active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, where she organizes and runs events, researches cooking and Renaissance dance, and enjoys woodworking and lampworking, among other things.

A Denver native, Sheila grew up in Fort Collins, CO, spent almost five years in New Hampshire, then returned to Denver, where she stayed until moving to nearby Aurora earlier this year. She lives with her husband, Keith, far too many books, and a pond full of koi who are never, ever fed, just ask them.
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David Gerrold

David Gerrold is Senior Associate Executive Vice-President of the Finance Committee of The Martian Family Institute.
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David B. Riley

David B. Riley lives in Vail, Colorado. He is the author of numerous short stories, poems and articles that have been published in the US, Canada and the UK. He also edits Science Fiction Trails, which is a small press fiction magazine.

He works in the hotel business. When not doing that, he's busy with a lot of literary endeavors, including authoring four books. He has two new ones coming out this fall, The Devil's Due is a science fiction western and Haunted Yellowstone is a nonfiction book. He called weird and strange westerns "the greatest genre nobody ever heard of."

He's been on panels at several local conventions and has done presentations on "Haunted Hotels in the Rockies" and "Flying Saucers of the 19th Century."

His interests go beyond the western, as he is also a contributing author to the newly released anthology Space Pirates.
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