Joe Abercrombie
Joe Abercrombie was born in Lancaster in 1974. His first book, The Blade Itself, was published in 2006. He lives in Bath with his wife Lou and their three children Grace, Eve and Teddy.
Author
Claire McKenna
Claire McKenna is a speculative fiction writer from Melbourne, Australia. Claire grew up in Auckland, New Zealand and came to Australia when she was young. Her stories decided to come with her.
A longtime writer of short fiction with a background in environmental sciences, Monstrous Heart is Claire’s debut novel.
Kim Harrison
The only girl in a large family of boys, former tomboy Kim Harrison invented the first Brigadier General Barbie in self-defence. She shoots a very bad game of pool and rolls a very good game of dice. When not at her keyboard, she enjoys lounging on the couch with a bowl of popcorn watching action movies with The-Guy-In-The-Leather-Jacket. She plays her Ashiko drum when no one is listening, and is hard to find when the moon is new.
Nick Cole
Nick Cole is a working actor living in Southern California. He has been writing for most of his life and acting in Hollywood after serving in the U.S. Army. His novel Soda Pop Soldier was published in 2015.
Raymond E. Feist
Raymond E. Feist was born and raised in Southern California. He was educated at the University of California, San Diego, where he graduated with honours in Communication Arts. He is the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Riftwar Cycle among other books.
Stephen Donaldson
Stephen Donaldson was born in 1947 in Cleveland, Ohio. Between the ages of three and sixteen he lived in India, where his father, an orthopaedic surgeon, worked with leprosy sufferers. This inspired his fictional character, Thomas Covenant.
Donaldson served two years as a conscientious objector doing hospital work in Akron, then attended Kent State University, where he received his M.A. in English in 1971. He now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Brian Aldiss
Brian Aldiss, OBE, is a fiction and science fiction writer, poet, playwright, critic, memoirist and artist. He was born in Norfolk in 1925. After leaving the army, Aldiss worked as a bookseller, which provided the setting for his first book, The Brightfount Diaries (1955). His first published science fiction work was the story ‘Criminal Record’, which appeared in Science Fantasy in 1954. Since then he has written nearly 100 books and over 300 short stories.
Robin Hobb
Robin Hobb is one of the world’s finest writers of epic fiction. She was born in California in 1952 but raised in Alaska. She raised her family, ran a smallholding, delivered post to her remote community, all at the same time as writing stories and novels. She succeeded on all fronts, raising four children and becoming an internationally best-selling writer. She lives in Tacoma, Washington State.
Arthur C. Clarke
Born in Somerset in 1917, Arthur C. Clarke has written over sixty books, among which are the science fiction classics ‘2001, A Space Odyssey’, ‘Childhood’s End’, ‘The City and the Stars’ and ‘Rendezvous With Rama’. He has won all the most prestigious science fiction trophies, and shared an Oscar nomination with Stanley Kubrick for the screenplay of the film of 2001. He was knighted in 1998. He passed away in March 2008.