Program Participant Biographies, Continued

Lettie Prell

Lettie Prell's first novel, Dragon Ring, was released this year from Flying Pen Press. Her fiction has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, The Lorelei Signal, and elsewhere. She is also a poet. Her haiku was featured in the Iowa Drama Workshop production of Kali Ma, and has been published in Pangaia, Kai Han and elsewhere. "A logical next step for me," she says, "would be to put the two together and write science fiction poetry. I've dabbled in that direction but nothing has gelled yet."

Born in the small northern Illinois town of Durand, she began writing stories as a girl, then studied literature and writing at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, while earning a degree in public administration. Then in her late 20s, she began writing science fiction and fantasy stories in earnest. Her first sale was to The Crystal Tower Intuitive Magazine of the Midlands in 1990, and her stories appeared regularly in that magazine throughout the 1990s. "It was a great way to begin," she says. "Regular publication was personally satisfying, and I spent a lot of time attending writing workshops and honing my skills."

Prell is active in the sf/f/h community and is currently the editor of the Broadsheet, the web magazine of Broad Universe. She still lives in Des Moines, with her writer spouse John Domini, dog Woody and cat Laverne. She enjoys a career in state government and is currently director of research for the Iowa Department of Corrections. "I tell people I started writing science fiction to compensate for doing too much math at work," she says. "There's truth to the joke, but the reality is I've learned I need to give myself over to my creative side in order to be truly happy."
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Linda Robinett

Science fiction fan Linda Robinett was born and grew up in Lancaster, California in the high desert. She has a BA in History from the University of Redlands, a Masters in Library Science from San Jose State and a Masters in Systems Management from USC.

Linda has been a science fiction fan “as long as I have been able to read.” She’s been attending conventions for almost thirty years.

Presently a technical reference librarian at a special library at China Lake, a Navy base in the high desert of California near Ridgecrest, Linda has also worked as a computer programmer and systems analyst.
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Lisa Mantchev

Writer Lisa Mantchev grew up in the small Northern California town of Ukiah. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine and currently makes her home on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state with her husband Angel, her daughter Amélie, and four hairy miscreant dogs. When not scribbling, she can be found on the beach, up a tree, making jam or repairing things with her trusty glue gun.

Lisa can pinpoint her first forays into fiction to the short stories she thumped out on an ancient typewriter. Playwriting came a few years later with an adaptation of Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird for a May Day Festival in the fourth grade. Her first professional short fiction sale was in 2002, and her work appears in venues like Clarkesworld, Weird Tales, Fantasy Magazine and Strange Horizons.

Starting at the age of seven with community theater productions, Lisa has also been deeply involved with theater as writer, director, producer, and actress. In college, Lisa won the Chancellor's Award For Undergraduate Research in Drama while studying in the Campuswide Honors Program.

Lisa’s young adult fantasy trilogy, The Théâtre Illuminata, sold to Feiwel & Friends, and Book One, EYES LIKE STARS, will be released in the Spring of 2009.
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Lynda Hilburn

Writer Lynda Hilburn was raised in Detroit and moved to Colorado in 1977. She has a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and has worked in private practice as a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist for 14 years. Prior to that, she was a professional singer/musician.

After years of writing non-fiction articles, columns, and teaching material, the fiction bug bit Lynda, and “I went down like a skyscraper in an earthquake. Writing about all the magical, mystical and bizarre things in my head was more fun than, well, almost anything.” Her first novel, The Vampire Shrink, introduced us to Denver psychologist Kismet Knight and a hidden vampire underworld.

Lynda says that “after a childhood filled with invisible friends, sightings of dead relatives and a fascination with the occult, turning to the paranormal was a no-brainer.” She also expresses an interest in human psychology. “What makes people tick? And why do we make the odd choices and decisions we do?” Along with her Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology, she is skilled in hypnotherapy, sound healing, and personal coaching.

Dark Harvest, the second book in her Kismet Knight series, will be available October, 2008, and she is also working on a story for an anthology called The Mammoth Book Of Paranormal Romance, which will be released worldwide February, 2009.
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Margaret McBride

Margaret McBride moved around a lot in her early years as an “Army brat.” She started reading science fiction and fantasy before she was twelve, thanks to an older brother who brought books home from the library. Though she stopped reading in college, she returned to the fold in the Seventies.

Margaret has taught science fiction in both high school and college, her classes ranging from classic science fiction before 1965 to gender and sexuality in science fiction. She’s also a member of the Science Fiction Research Association and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.

Margaret says her greatest honor was being designated chair of the 2004 James Tiptree Award panel, which included Ursula K. LeGuin.
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Marilyn Kosmatka

Marilyn Kosmatka is currently Eric Flint’s co-writer for Time Spike, a novel written about a maximum security prison sent back to the days of the dinosaurs, and published by Baen Books. Before that she was a writer of magazine and newspaper snippets. She also wrote poetry and short stories. “I was and forever am a nurse.”

Of the Seven Daughters of Eve, she is Jasmine’s offspring. Her clan taught the Egyptians farming and then traveled north to become the Celts and the Welsh. She is also the mom of four. “And I am told I’m a winner in the genetic lottery since I am a grandma of seven with the eighth on the way,” she says.

She is the daughter of migrant construction workers, before parents were told thirty-seven schools in twelve years was not good for a child, and was raised in Chicago’s Loop with its skyscrapers, buses, museums, zoos and, of course, Maxwell Street. She spent an equal amount of her childhood in the south, in areas time skipped, where outhouses, kerosene lamps, and coal stoves were not unusual.

She was the second person in her family to graduate high school, and the first to go to a university. She was the first woman in her county to win the primary for County Commissioner, but was not the first woman elected to that post. Her grandfather signed his name with an X, and her father got her a library card each time they moved.

She says she’s a mutt. She’s English, German, Dutch, Irish, French, Chippewa, Cherokee and Blackfoot. Some of her relatives came to America across the land bridge. Others crossed the Atlantic. Some were rich, most were poor. A few were indentured servants. One took his two infant sons, stole a leaky boat and floated across Lake Michigan late at night to escape a Canadian Indian reservation.

She comes from a long line of story tellers. She was just the first with the ability and the opportunity to write a few of them down.
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Mark Graham

Mark Graham grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri, the birthplace of the Pony Express and the death place of Jesse James. He attended the University of Missouri on a football scholarship and graduated with a Bachelor or Journalism degree in 1967. After a brief stint in the national advertising department of The Denver Post, he decided on a teaching and coaching career and finished his Master of Arts degree in English and education at the University of Colorado in 1974. He retired from Ralston Valley High School (which boasts a fine science fiction collection in its library) in 2003. In 30+ years he taught over 12,000 students in various English disciplines. As far as he knows, only one has been convicted of a capital crime. He is proud to have been one of the creators of Unreal Literature, a science fiction class that was taught in Jefferson County high schools for over 20 years and imitated around the country. He also coached many gifted track and field athletes and was Colorado’s Track Coach of the Year in 1996.

In 1977 Mark began writing book reviews for the Rocky Mountain News and, shortly after that, took over all science fiction, fantasy and horror reviewing for the Denver newspaper. His monthly column, “Unreal Worlds,” ran for over a dozen years. It was replaced by weekly reviews that continue to the present day. In the past 31 years he has reviewed over 1200 books, most in the science fiction and fantasy genres and interviewed many prominent authors in the field for the News and various periodicals. He has reviewed books by more than 50 of the authors in attendance at Denvention 3.

Mark has been married to his wife, Linda, for 40 years. They met at a picnic when he was three years old and she was four, but, for a while, they decided to see other people. They did not make plans to marry until several years later. They have a son and a daughter, and Mark expects granddaughter Kate (18 months) to win a Hugo before human beings set foot on Mars.
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Mark Leeper

Mark Leeper has been a fan of science fiction cinema since an early age and has written about the subject from age ten. He later branched out to reviewing film in general. In 1968 Mark introduced his future wife and un-indicted co-conspirator Evelyn to fandom and the two have been active ever since. The two were central figures of the University of Massachusetts Science Fiction Club for which Mark served as president.

After bringing a little science fiction to Stanford where Mark received a Masters in Mathematics, Mark and Evelyn were active in the Wayne State Third Foundation (science fiction society) in Detroit. In 1978, Mark and Evelyn founded the former Bell Laboratories Science Fiction Club, which the two have run ever since (though it is no longer associated with the Laboratories.). Their energy is focused on the club's weekly publication, The MT Void, which features Mark's editorials and his film writing and has been running weekly since the late 1970s. Mark is one of the longest-running film reviewers on the Internet, regularly publishing reviews since 1980. His best known hobbies after film are travel (for which he also does a substantial amount of Internet writing), origami (especially science fiction origami), and recreational mathematics.
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Mark Olson

Mark Olson is a long-time SF fan who discovered SF long before he discovered fandom, and he discovered fandom long before he got involved in con-running, and only after that did he get involved in NESFA Press. He has chaired several conventions including a Worldcon (Noreascon 3), a Boskone, a Smofcon, and co-chaired a Ditto and has worked on numerous others. He has edited a dozen books and reviewed SF for Aboriginal SF magazine.

Professionally, he's a VP of Software Development, who trained as a chemist and really wanted to be an astronomer.
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Mary Kay Kare

Mary Kay has been reading fantasy and SF since she was quite young, and she's been going to cons for 32 years. (Her first one was a worldcon!) She has worked on conventions ranging in size from Worldcons to 100 people in positions ranging from Chair to gopher. She likes doing registration and programming the best.

The best thing she has gotten from fandom is her husband Jordin Kare, Generic Handwaving Physicist, Rocket Scientist, Mad Inventor, and Filker of Note. Second best is a collection of friends all over the world.

Mary Kay's other fannish interests have included filking, being a dealer, writing reviews, fanzine publishing, TAFF, apas, online fandom, and, oh yes, reading and talking about fantasy and science fiction. Additionally, she’s a member of the Mythopoeic Society, reads for their Adult Fantasy award every year, and is a volunteer for Clarion West.

Find too much about Mary Kay at http://marykaykare.livejournal.com/
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