King, Stephen H.

A Mississippi native, TOSK (Stephen H. King) was moved in high school entirely against his will from the small town of Corinth to a city he ended up loving in southern California. A series of mostly unexplainable decisions led him through a strange sequence of events beginning at the United States Military Academy, where he double-majored in physics and electrical engineering, followed by a fairly short career as an Infantry officer and then an electronics technician, a product engineer, a carpenter’s helper, and an elementary school janitor, before ending up on the faculty of a small college in Anchorage, Alaska.

During those years, he learned that reading science fiction and fantasy allowed him to escape the strangeness into the more understandable worlds crafted by Isaac Asimov, Piers Anthony, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and many other great writers. As time went on he began to mold his own worlds, and thus his novels were born.

Stephen now lives in Midlothian, VA, with his wife, daughter, and two white Chihuahuas that seem to enjoy morphing from therapuppies into miniature dragons at the sound of food being opened. Stephen is currently working on the next book in the Return of the Gods series.

Link to website:  http://www.theotherstephenking.com/index.html

By Doris Posted in Fan, GOH

Bear, Elizabeth

I was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year (I can only hope that this presages that I, too, will live to be eleventy-one) — but because my parents were hippies, I was nearly named after Peregrin Took. With the exception of seven years in Faerie, or perhaps Las Vegas (they are not so different, really) I have been a New Englander all my life — Connecticut, Vermont, and now Massachusetts. I serve as an alloparent to two amazing (very) young men, Sunil and Naveen, from whom I am constantly learning new and amazing things.

I share my living quarters in a drafty Victorian (which, as of this writing, has just celebrated its eleventy-first) with a giant, ridiculous dog (he happens to be a Briard). I am a terrible but enthusiastic guitarist, a reasonably good and even more enthusiastic cook, and a hobby outdoorswoman. My sports are hiking, running, yoga, archery, kayaking, and rock climbing (sport and top rope, though someday I hope to learn trad).

I am the author of a number of novels and short stories in the science fiction and fantasy genre, and have been fortunate to receive a good deal of recognition for that work including two Hugo Awards, the John W. Cambell Award for Best New Writer (2005), a Sturgeon Award, a Locus Award, an Asimov’s Reader’s Choice award, a Spectrum Award, and an honorable mention for the Philip K. Dick Award. I have also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the British Science Fiction Award, the Lambda Award, the Romantic Times Reader’s Choice Award, and several others.

My work has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish, and Portuguese, among other languages.

I enjoy teaching workshops, and have done instructor stints at Clarion, Clarion West, the WisCon Writer’s Respite, and Odyssey. I am a regular instructor at Viable Paradise.

My partner is a fantasy novelist who lives in Wisconsin. Nope, not that one.

…I spend a lot of time on planes.

Link to website:  http://www.elizabethbear.com