Program Participant Biographies, Continued

Bonnie Kunzel

Bonnie Kunzel writes books about books, including annotated bibliographies of what's good to read in science fiction and fantasy. She's a regular reviewer for the journal VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates), specializing in the areas of science fiction and fantasy, and is a Science Fiction and Fantasy editor for "NoveList,”" an online reader's advisory service. She is the co-author, with her friend and colleague Suzanne Manczuk, of First Contact: A Reader's Selection of Science Fiction and Fantasy (Scarecrow Press, 2001). In 2002 her second reader's advisory book, Strictly Science Fiction, co-authored with another friend and colleague, Diana Tixier Herald, was published by Libraries Unlimited. This is a title in their popular Genreflecting series.

She was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, and began working as a Young Adult Librarian in NJ in 1989. She retired as the Youth Services Consultant for the New Jersey State Library in December of 2006, and returned with her husband to Tennessee. She is a "Golden Age of Science Fiction" reader, becoming a fan in the fifth grade when she selected two books to read that her teacher had in the classroom: Heinlein's Star Beast (still a personal favorite) and one of Andre Norton's Witch World novels.

In 2006 she was selected Librarian of the Year by the New Jersey Library Association, only the second youth services librarian to receive this honor. A graduate of Rutgers University, she is a Past-President of YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association, a Division of the American Library Association) and was a member of the YALSA committee that revised the Science Fiction Genre list. She was the science fiction and fantasy discussion leader at YALSA's Popular Materials pre-conference at ALA annual.

She now works as a Youth Services and Adolescent Literacy Consultant, still trying to get the word out about good books for young people. She does booktalking presentations around the country on topics such as "Beyond Harry Potter" (good fantasies to read now that they've read all the Harry Potter books) and "What's New in Science Fiction and Fantasy." Her latest works are Tamora Pierce. Teen Reads: Student Companions to Young Adult Literature (Greenwood Press, 2007) with Susan Fichtelberg and Fluent in Fantasy: The Next Generation (Libraries Unlimited, 2007) with Diana Tixier Herald. Said Kunzel, "I love what I do - reading and talking about books and connecting teen and adult readers with books they will enjoy."
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Jay Lake

Jay Lake has been described as one of the rising stars of the science fiction and fantasy genre. Since first appearing on the scene in late 2001, he has seen over 200 short stories published, along with three novels out, and five more forthcoming over the next few years. His work has received starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly and Booklist, and significant recognition within the science fiction and fantasy field. He has won two of the most prestigious awards in science fiction and been nominated for numerous others.

Lake was born and raised overseas as the son of a United States diplomat. His childhood experiences in Asia, Africa, and Europe have given him a wealth of cultural and geographical detail to draw from when creating exotic settings and strange situations. He has, after all, lived them. His professional career has been in advertising and marketing for the high technology field, which gives Lake a lifetime of exposure to technology issues and trends. Taken together, these go a long way to explaining his choice of writing fields.

Lake is a frequent guest at writing conferences and conventions, where he does readings as well as workshops with newer writers, paying forward all the help and mentoring he has received and continues to benefit from. With his distinctive attire and quirky, improvisational humor, Lake is a familiar figure and a fan favorite all over the West Coast.

Sharon Shinn

Sharon Shinn has been writing since she was eight years old, though she didn't publish her first book for another thirty years. "I always tell people I'm the poster child for perseverance," she says.

Since that time, she has published 18 novels, including the Twelve Houses books, the Samaria series of angel books, and four young adult novels. She won the William C. Crawford Award for Outstanding New Fantasy Writer for her first book, and two of her novels have been named to the ALA's lists of Best Books for Young Adults. She's currently working on a collection of four novellas set in the worlds she created in Archangel, Heart of Gold, Summers at Castle Auburn, and Mystic and Rider.

In addition to writing fiction, Sharon, who has a journalism degree from Northwestern University, has been an editor on a variety of trade magazines for more than 20 years. In her rare free time, she reads across all genres, cheers on the St. Louis Cardinals, haunts the cineplex, and practices her Sudoku skills. She has spent most of her life in Chicago and St. Louis.
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Robert Silverberg

I guess when you're a superstar (or a Grand Master) you don't have to say much. Everyone already knows. We usually try to edit author bios that we receive, but in this case I think anything extra would be superfluous.

Robert Silverberg was born in New York, has lived in California since the early 1970s, and has been a professional science fiction writer since 1955. He is the author of more than 100 books and hundreds of short stories and has won five Hugo and five Nebula awards. In 2004 the Science Fiction Writers of America gave him its Grand Master award. Among his best-known books are Lord Valentine's Castle, Nightwings, Dying Inside, and The Book of Skulls.
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Lawrence Watt-Evans

Lawrence Watt-Evans is a professor's kid from Massachusetts who decided early in life that writing for a living looked like more fun than a real job. Perhaps this is a natural conclusion for a person who taught himself to read from a comic book at the age of five. He grew up with five siblings in an old Victorian house rumored to be haunted, which provided a terrific backdrop for Halloween, as well as an inspiration for a burgeoning horror writer.

He briefly attended college, but dropped out, got married, and sold his first novel, The Lure of the Basilisk, at the age of twenty-four. He has been a full-time writer ever since, a career of more than 30 years and counting. He and his wife have two kids, a boy and a girl, who grew up thinking it was perfectly normal to have their father home all day, holed up in his cluttered little office staring at his computer.

Lawrence is the author of more than thirty novels, over one hundred short stories, over one hundred and fifty published articles, and a few comic books. In addition to his writing, he has worked as a professional researcher, a position he would be pleased to repeat. He also has taught writer's workshops throughout New England and Maryland. Lawrence was an active member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America from 1982 to 2006, and served as Eastern Regional Director and treasurer. He received a short story nomination for the 1987 Nebula Award and in 1988 won the Hugo award for best short story for "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers." Also among his more notable works are the Ethshar fantasy series.

Julia S. Mandala

Julia S. Mandala specializes in humorous science fiction. Her chapbooks, The Four Redheads of the Apocalypse (co-authored with Linda Donahue, Dusty Rainbolt and Rhonda Eudaly) and Dracula's Lawyer are available from Yard Dog Press.

A Kansas City native, now living in Plano, Texas, she's been writing fiction since she learned how to put pencil to paper. Explained Mandala, “I wrote my first (awful) novel in the sixth grade and wrote a second (slightly less awful) book in high school.“ Going through what she described as “a long case of writer's block” while at Kansas State University and Tulane University's law school, she returned to writing after graduation. She sold he first short story to the first place she sent it, then spent two years trying to make her second sale.

Having forsaken the law, she is married to an attorney, and is the mother of two cats. She is also a scuba diver, an underwater photographer, a copy editor, and a belly dancer with Ravenar, which performs themed shows at science fiction conventions.

Her most recent writing projects are two novels coming soon from Yard Dog Press, Four Redheads of the Apocalypse: Apocalypse Now! (co-authored with Linda Donahue, Dusty Rainbolt and Rhonda Eudaly)and House of Doors. She also has stories in Best of the Bubbas, International House of Bubbas, Houston, We've Got Bubbas, Flush Fiction, The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy II, MZB's Fantasy Magazine and Adventures of Sword & Sorcery.
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Geoffrey Landis

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Geoffrey Landis has called many places home. He currently lives in Berea, Ohio with his wife, science fiction writer Mary A. Turzillo, two cats, and several teddy bears, but no goldfish. He has degrees in Physics and electrical engineering from MIT and a PhD in solid-state physics from Brown University.

The first book Geoffrey remembers having was called You Will Go To the Moon, purchased, he suspects, because the cover depicts a red-haired boy peering through a telescope. He hasn't gotten there yet, but in his current job as a member of the science team on the Mars Exploration Rovers Mission, he gets to drive the rovers "Spirit" and "Opportunity" around on the surface of Mars.

Geoffrey reports that he has flown the human-powered airplane "Chrysalis." He was also involved in a project called SpaceCub to design a personal rocket for the hobby flyer. But not all of his pursuits are scientific. He says that, "Long ago, in a previous life, [I] used to be an amateur artist."

Geoffrey's most recent projects are designing a power system for the Solar Probe Plus mission that will skim down close to the sun, and technology development for future missions to Venus. His most recent story is "The Man in the Mirror," in the January/February issue of Analog magazine.
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Fred Lerner

Fred Lerner has been a librarian and bibliographer for almost forty years, and was one of the founders of the Science Fiction Research Association. He has produced teachers' guides for several science fiction publishers, and was science fiction columnist for Voice of Youth Advocates and the Wilson Library Bulletin, and as Contributing Editor, Science Fiction and Fantasy for the NoveList website.

His first book, Modern Science Fiction and the American Literary Community (Scarecrow Press, 1985), was a scholarly study of science fiction's changing reputation in America. In The Story of Libraries: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age (Continuum, 1998) and Libraries Through the Ages (Continuum, 1999), he has written about the history of libraries. His first published story, “Rosetta Stone” (Artemis, Winter 2000; reprinted in Year's Best SF 5) has been described by anthologist David Hartwell as “the only SF story I know in which the science is library science.”

Fred has been active in Fandom since the end of 1962, and has been a member of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association for twenty-nine years. In his quarterly FAPAzine Lofgeornost he writes about books, art, travel, and the joys of living in Vermont. He also writes for Niekas, Argentus, and other leading fanzines. A collection of his fannish writings, A Bookman's Fantasy, was published by NESFA Press in 1995.

Ctein

Ctein is not the average photographer. Artist, artisan, and scientist, Ctein's 30+-year career has established him as a world-renowned expert in photographic arts and technologies and one of the premier photographic printers alive. He is a Contributing Editor of Photo Techniques magazine and regular columnist for The Online Photographer, with 30 years experience writing on such topics as photography, display and printer technologies, electro-optics, web-publishing, and computers. His books include Post-Exposure - Advanced Techniques for the Photographic Printer and Digital Restoration from Start to Finish.

With degrees in English and physics from Caltech, he's an accomplished technical writer and fine art photographer. He's earned the reputation of one who can produce anything from dye transfer prints to the highest quality digital output. For three decades he has been a consummate dye transfer printer. He's one of only a handful of printers still working in this incredibly complex and beautiful process. When Kodak stopped making dye transfer supplies Ctein purchased a 20-year supply of the necessary materials. His work is so impressive that Kodak's own dye transfer experts proclaimed that there was no one alive who produced better color prints. Prints made by Ctein reside in major collections around the world - even the Royal Family of Great Britain have prints made by Ctein.

Ctein has long been involved in photographic print preservation and permanence. Today, digital photographic restoration (photo-repair.com) is one of his passions. In fact, Ctein may be one of the ultimate "early adopters" of digital photography and printing. He was designing digital cameras in 1971. In 1973 he made the world's first electronic prints directly from color negatives.

He's equally knowledgeable about a broad range of scientific topics, from physics to biology. For many years, he was a principal designer of worlds and alien cultures for CONTACT, the SF/anthropology conference.

Ctein's always been politically active, starting with his draft resistance in the 70's. His politics currently focus on pacifism, queer rights and feminism. Beginning with pioneering air pollution research back in his college days, he's been a committed environmentalist.

He adds, "Art, science and politics-- that's pretty much my whole life. That, and parrots."

Ctein's been Artist Guest of Honor at Minicon (1992), the Hawaii Westercon (2000) and Armadillocon (2005).
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Linda Donahue

Linda Donahue co-authored The 4 Redheads of the Apocalypse with three other writers. The sequel novel, The Redheads in: Apocalypse Now!, will be out later this year.

She's traveled the world, growing up in many places - including Okinawa - as an Air Force Brat. She has earned degrees in Computer Science (minor in EE), Russian Studies, and a Masters in Earth Sciences. She has a Commercial Instrument Pilot's Certification and a SCUBA certification, noting, "I guess that means I've been a danger by land, air or sea." She is also certified by NASA to borrow the moon rocks.

Her upcoming publications include a story co-authored with Mike Resnick for Martin Greenberg's anthology, Future Americas (DAW), the lead story in Cthulhu Unbound Vol. 1, and stories in Magic & Mechanica, Visages in the Void, Blood & Devotion, Paper Blossoms, and Sharpened Steel.
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