Rachel Maddux (1912 - 1983) was an American author and screenwriter. She was born on December 12, 1912, in Wichita, Kansas, married King Baker in 1941, and died on November 19, 1983, in Erin, Tennessee. [1] She attended the University of Wichita and graduated from Kansas University in 1934, with a degree in zoology. She began attending medical school, but had to withdraw for health reasons. [2]
Her first story, the novella "Turnip's Blood", was published by Story magazine in 1936. The New York Times reported in 1937 that Katharine Hepburn had bought the rights to the piece. [3] Maddux rewrote the story as "Girl in the Park" for the October 30, 1952 episode of The Ford Television Theatre. [4] She went on to write the fantasy novel The Green Kingdom (1957), the roman a clef Abel's Daughter (1960), and another novella, A Walk in the Spring Rain (1966), which was published in German as Die Frau des Anderen (1970). A Walk in the Spring Rain was made into a 1970 movie of the same name, with Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn, written and produced by Stirling Silliphant. Neil D. Isaacs wrote about that process in Fiction Into Film (1970).
In the 1950s, Maddux had stories published in several issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, including "Final Clearance" (1956) and "Overture and Beginners" (1957). [5] She wrote a "mental" (thematic) autobiography in 1941, published in 1991 as Communication, and a collection of 28 of her stories, The Way Things Are, was published posthumously in 1992.
In 1960, Maddux and her husband moved to Erin, Tennessee. While there, they became involved in fostering two abandoned siblings, and had to deal with the "misplaced pride" of the family and local residents when they tried (unsuccessfully) to adopt the children. [6] Maddux wrote the book The Orchard Children (1977) and the television movie "Who'll Save Our Children?" (1978) [7] about the experience. Her home in Erin was named a Literary Landmark by the American Library Association in 1998. [8]
James Benjamin Blish was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He is best known for his Cities in Flight novels and his series of Star Trek novelizations written with his wife, J. A. Lawrence. His novel A Case of Conscience won the Hugo Award. He is credited with creating the term "gas giant" to refer to large planetary bodies.
Truman Garcia Capote was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, and he is regarded as one of the founders of New Journalism, along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe. His work and his life story have been adapted into and have been the subject of more than 20 films and television productions.
Howard Melvin Fast was an American novelist and television writer. Fast also wrote under the pen names E.V. Cunningham and Walter Ericson.
Cormac McCarthy was an American author who wrote twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western, postapocalyptic, and Southern Gothic genres. His works often include graphic depictions of violence, and his writing style is characterised by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists.
John William Jakes was an American writer, best known for historical and speculative fiction. His American Civil War trilogy, North and South, has sold millions of copies worldwide. He was also the author of The Kent Family Chronicles. Jakes used the pen name Jay Scotland among others.
Kate Wilhelm was an American author. She wrote novels and stories in the science fiction, mystery, and suspense genres, including the Hugo Award–winning Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. Wilhelm established the Clarion Workshop along with her husband Damon Knight and writer Robin Scott Wilson.
Robert Anthony Stone was an American novelist, journalist, and college professor.
Tanith Lee was a British science fiction and fantasy writer. She wrote more than 90 novels and 300 short stories, and was the winner of multiple World Fantasy Society Derleth Awards, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror. She also wrote a children's picture book, and many poems. She wrote two episodes of the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7 .
Charles Lewis Grant was an American novelist and short story writer specializing in what he called "dark fantasy" and "quiet horror". He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Geoffrey Marsh, Lionel Fenn, Simon Lake, Felicia Andrews, Deborah Lewis, Timothy Boggs, Mark Rivers, and Steven Charles.
Malorie Blackman is a British writer who held the position of Children's Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She primarily writes literature and television drama for children and young adults. She has used science fiction to explore social and ethical issues, for example, her Noughts and Crosses series uses the setting of a fictional alternative Britain to explore racism. Blackman has been the recipient of many honours for her work, including the 2022 PEN Pinter Prize.
Julia Watts is an American fiction writer.
The Hugo Winners was a series of books which collected science fiction and fantasy stories that won a Hugo Award for Short Story, Novelette or Novella at the World Science Fiction Convention between 1955 and 1982. Each volume was edited by American writer Isaac Asimov, who wrote the introduction and a short essay about each author featured in the book. Through these essays, Asimov reveals personal anecdotes, which authors he's jealous of, and how other writers winning awards ahead of him made him angry. Additionally, he discusses his political beliefs, friendships, and his affinity for writers of "hard science fiction". The first two volumes were collected by Doubleday into a single book, which lacks a publishing date and ISBN.
A Walk in the Spring Rain is a 1970 American romantic drama film in Eastmancolor made by Columbia Pictures, directed by Guy Green and produced by Stirling Silliphant, from his own screenplay based on the novel by Rachel Maddux. Outside location scenes were filmed in New York City, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg, Tennessee and Knoxville, Tennessee.
Steven Millhauser is an American novelist and short story writer. He won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Martin Dressler.
Wilma Dykeman Stokely was an American writer of fiction and nonfiction whose works chronicled the people and land of Appalachia.
David Madden is an American writer of many novels, short stories, poems, plays, and works of nonfiction and literary criticism.
Roberta Leigh was an assumed name for Rita Lewin who was a British author, artist, composer and television producer. She wrote romance fiction and children's stories under the pseudonyms Roberta Leigh, Rachel Lindsay, Janey Scott and Rozella Lake.
Marriages and Infidelities is a collection of 25 works of short fiction by Joyce Carol Oates published by Vanguard Press in 1972.
Lela E. Buis is an American speculative fiction writer, playwright, poet and artist who was born in Middlesboro, KY. She graduated from Florida State University (FSU) and the Florida Institute of Technology, and worked in engineering for a number of years at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. She currently resides in Tennessee.