Program Participant Biographies, Continued

Nancy Atherton

Nancy Atherton was born in Chicago, but she has lived in many different places since then. After graduating from the University of Chicago, she followed the true Liberal Arts tradition by working every low-paying job in America. She had no idea that she was supposed to be a writer until the first line of her first book, Aunt Dimity's Death, popped into her head. She's been writing ever since. The thirteenth book in the series, Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter, came out in 2008, and she is currently at work on the next one. "There's more to mystery than murder!" she says. Nancy has lived in Colorado for six years and hopes fervently that she'll be allowed to live there for many years to come. In her spare time, she climbs mountains.
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Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Jacqueline Lichtenberg is creator of the Sime Gen Universe, primary author of Star Trek Lives!, founder of the Star Trek Welcommittee, and creator of the term "Intimate Adventure." She has won the Galaxy Award for Spirituality in Science Fiction and was one of the first Romantic Times Award winners for Best Science Fiction Novel.

She became hooked on SF in 6th grade when her mother snuck her a book from the "adult" library. She fought with her high school English teachers about the superiority of the E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series over that of the "Classics" on the required reading list. As a result, she avoided all English courses in college because she had become determined to become an SF writer. "So like many SF writers I knew," said Lichtenberg, "I majored in Chemistry." She's been a member of the N3F since 7th grade, and a member of SFWA since 1969.

She has stayed on the cutting edge of Internet developments in fiction publication and is well acquainted with the origin and development of fanfic devoted to books (including her own) and TV shows. She has edited an anthology of professional stories by writers best known for their online fanfic. Lichtenberg can be found on Linked-In, Facebook, and Goodreads plus a few other social networking sites. And, she adds, "I blog with 6 SF-Supernatural-Alien Romance writers."

Special note: Fans of the Sime Gen novels are planning a party Friday night of Denvention in the party hotel. Details and updates will be posted on simegen-l and published in newsletter-l - both available for free subscription at http://www.simegen.com/archives/.
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Theresa Crater

Theresa Crater was born in North Carolina and majored in English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the school where you can throw one rock and hit two writers. She studied in Europe to become a meditation teacher, but when she ran out of money, went to graduate school at the University of Washington to get what some people call a real job. She has degrees in English and counseling.

Theresa told her parents at the age of seven that she wanted to be a writer, but they told her no one could make a living doing that. But she kept trying. Now, she lives near Boulder where she watches the wildlife with her husband and cats.

In her first novel, Under the Stone Paw, Anne Le Clair inherits a crystal that turns out to be one of six "keys" to the fabled Hall of Records beneath the Sphinx in Egypt. But will she get there before the Illuminati? "I love to travel to prehistoric sites, learn the stories about the place and bring them into the present moment." The sequel, Beneath the Hallowed Hill, takes place in contemporary Glastonbury and ancient Atlantis and is currently under negotiations.
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Glen Cook

Born in New York City, Glen Cook has lived in California and several places in between. After serving in the Navy and attending the University of Missouri, he worked for General Motors for thirty-three years. He's now retired, living in St Louis, Missouri.

Glen began writing in seventh grade and had short stories published in his high school magazine. He became serious about it in 1967 after reading "a really bad book." Worlds of Tomorrow bought his first work, but folded before it could be published. So "Silverheels," published in Witchcraft and Sorcery, became his first professional appearance.

With more than a million copies in print in a dozen and more languages, Glen is best known for his "Black Company" series. He has also published another forty or so books which he claims do better in Russia, Poland, and France.

Mike Brotherton

Mike Brotherton was born in Granite City, Illinois, and now teaches astronomy at all levels at the University of Wyoming and conducts research specializing in observational investigations of quasars. He uses a variety of ground and space-based telescopes including the Hubble Space Telescope, Keck Observatory, the Very Large Array, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Wyoming Infrared Observatory, and Kitt Peak National Observatory. "Being a professional astronomer means getting paid to feed my sense of wonder on a daily basis." He has sold short fiction to magazines and anthologies, and is a graduate of the Clarion West workshop. His first novel Star Dragon was published by Tor Books in 2003 to excellent reviews, making the Locus Recommended Reading List, and was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for best science fiction novel of the year. His second science fiction novel, Spider Star, came out from Tor in March, 2008. He is the founder of the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for writers and lives in Laramie, Wyoming with his fierce cat, Sita. Visit Mike's website.
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Kay Kenyon

Kay Kenyon, nominated for the Philip K. Dick and the John W. Campbell awards, began her writing career in Duluth, Minnesota as a copywriter for radio and TV. She kept up her interest in writing through careers in marketing and urban planning, and published her first novel, The Seeds of Time, in 1997. She is the author of eight sf/f novels, including Bright of the Sky and A World Too Near, the opening stories of the saga The Entire and the Rose. The series is the story of a man's odyssey in search of his family through a tunnel universe with a river of fire for a sky.

How did she begin? Said Kenyon, "I started with novels, and wrote a few practice ones before finally, after eight years of work, breaking in. Some people just do things the hard way."

Her novels and short stories have variously been anthologized, podcast, and translated into French, Russian, Spanish and Czech. Recent short stories appeared in Fast Forward 2 and the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. Two. When not writing, she encourages newcomers to the field through workshops, a writing e-newsletter, and a conference in eastern Washington State, “Write on the River”, of which she is president. She lives in Wenatchee, Washington with her husband, Tom Overcast, and her large orange cat Sumo. Visit Kay Kenyon online.
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Nancy Kress

Nancy Kress is the author of twenty-five books: twelve SF novels, three fantasy novels, two thrillers, four collections of short stories, one YA novel, and three books on writing fiction. She is perhaps best known for the "Sleepless" trilogy that began with Beggars In Spain, which explores questions of genetic engineering, social structure, and what society's "haves" owe its "have-nots." Kress's work has been translated into twenty languages, and her short fiction has won three Nebulas, a Hugo, and a Sturgeon. (She has also lost over a dozen of these awards.) She's nominated for a Hugo this year for her novella "The Fountain of Age." "Probability Space" won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her most recent books are a collection of short stories, Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press), and Dogs (Tachyon). The Science Fiction novel Steal Across the Sky will appear in December, 2008, from Tor.

Nancy teaches writing at Writers & Books in Rochester, NY, and also frequently at Clarion. During the winter 2008-09 term, she will be a visiting lecturer at the University of Leipzig. In addition to teaching, she is a columnist for the Chinese magazine Science Fiction World. Nancy lives in Rochester, New York, with the world's most spoiled toy poodle.
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Sharon Lee

Sharon Lee was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and lived there until the late eighties, when she relocated to Central Maine with her charming and talented co-author husband, Steve Miller. From 1997-2000 she was Executive Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. All of the rest of her day-jobs have been boring things like copy editor for night side news at a daily paper, copywriter for an advertising agency, tractor trailer delivery person, phone order taker at LL Bean -- and secretary. Lots and lots of secretary.

Sharon has been writing since she was four or five. Her first "work," printed out in one of those marble-backed copy books, was titled "How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin." "Yes, I happened to have a Golden Book of the same title, from which I had painstakingly copied the 'work,' but I had a Clever Plan involving hiding the book under my bed before passing the story off as my own. Alas, I was busted by my dad, who recommended that I find something more useful to do with my time." she explains.

Her first short story was published in Amazing Stories in 1980; the first collaborative novel with her husband Steve Miller Agent of Change was published in 1988. "I started writing seriously (as opposed to ripping off Rudyard Kipling) back in the seventies sometime, because I had read a whole bunch of mediocre stories and finally uttered the Fateful Phrase: 'I can do better than that!'"

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller write space opera set in the Liaden Universe®, a science fiction universe of their own devising. Duainfey, the first book in a dark fantasy duology, will be coming out from Baen in September 2008. The sequel, Longeye, is scheduled for April 2009. And they're continuing to serialize Saltation -- a Liaden Universe novel -- on the web.
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Steve Miller

Steve Miller was born in Baltimore during the summer of 1950, and is the grandson of award-winning poet and radio personality Dorothea Neale. He has been an active fan and writer since the 1960s when he began writing SF book reviews for fanzines in the US, France, and Texas... and for newspapers in Baltimore and elsewhere. "I owe a lot to Amazing. I got my first polite rejection from Amazing, and I got my first usefully instructional rejection from Amazing. I sold my first three pro stories to Amazing. My first piece of fan mail came from there -- it was a letter from Andre Norton, who'd been shown my story by a friend."

Steve graduated to writing professional science fiction after teaching SF and writing for several years, going to Clarion West in 1973, and a stint as Curator of Science Fiction for the University of Maryland's UMBC SF Research Collection. He has also been active in chess since 1966, and has been a tournament player and team member of high school, collegiate, and club teams as well as a USCF tournament director and President of several chess clubs.

Steve joined forces with Sharon Lee in the late 70s; for awhile they operated the Book Castle SF bookstore and the Dreams Garth Agency dealing in genre art. In the mid-eighties they began working on Agent of Change, the first book in one of the better known series in SF today, the Liaden Universe series. Steve started BPLAN Virtuals, an early (and short-lived) electronic book publishing company, in the late 1980s while he was acting as PR Director for North County. SRM Publisher, Ltd was formed in 1995 as an outgrowth of fan interest in Liaden material.

In addition to the Liaden books Steve and Sharon have collaborated on short stories, anthologies, and on other science fiction and fantasy novels, with Duainfey, their latest, to be published by Baen Books in September. They currently offer a popular weekly online novel serialization Saltation.

Steve now acts as Publisher for SRM Publisher, is a Trustee for the Winslow, Maine, Public Library, and still keeps cats and confusion with Sharon amid the rolling hills of Central Maine.
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Bill Mayhew

Bill Mayhew is a storyteller. He has been telling stories in public for some thirty years in a variety of places, including nine states and the District of Columbia, to audiences ranging from kindergarten to senior citizens. He has told stories at colleges, campfires, on the Voice of America, at the Kennedy Center, at birthday parties, and even at the Easter Egg Roll at the White house. He also had a cable television show that had a seven-year run devoted to storytelling. When he's not telling stories he has done the occasional lecture on the subject of storytelling. Before he went into storytelling full time, he was a school librarian.

His stories are mostly folk tales, chosen from all around the world. His favorite stories are the humorous ones. While he tells ghost stories and sad stories, as well as classic stories such as those about Beowulf and Odysseus, but mostly he likes the funny ones. Many of his "ghosties" are humorous.

He can be heard on two recordings. On cassette he's on "D. Crockett, the Cyclops & Me." More recently he's released the CD "Maren & the Bears & Me."

When he's not performing in public he likes to focus on his family. Said Mayhew, "I have three cute grandchildren. I don't know what this has to do with anything but they really are cute so I like to tell people. Don't be frightened, I don't carry pictures."
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