Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy. The trilogy's first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland. Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also edited with his wife Ann VanderMeer such influential and award-winning anthologies as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction.
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year's best works of fiction by living American citizens. The winner receives US $15,000 and each of four runners-up receives US $5000. Finalists read from their works at the presentation ceremony in the Great Hall of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The organization claims it to be "the largest peer-juried award in the country." The award was first given in 1981.
Constance Elaine Trimmer Willis, commonly known as Connie Willis, is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards for particular works—more major SF awards than any other writer—most recently the "Best Novel" Hugo and Nebula Awards for Blackout/All Clear (2010). She was inducted by the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009 and the Science Fiction Writers of America named her its 28th SFWA Grand Master in 2011.
Patricia Frances Grace is a New Zealand Māori writer of novels, short stories, and children's books. She began writing as a young adult, while working as a teacher. Her early short stories were published in magazines, leading to her becoming the first female Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories, Waiariki, in 1975. Her first novel, Mutuwhenua: The Moon Sleeps, followed in 1978.
Anthony Doerr is an American author of novels and short stories. He gained widespread recognition for his 2014 novel All the Light We Cannot See, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The Sir Julius Vogel Awards are awarded each year at the New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention to recognise achievement in New Zealand science fiction, fantasy, horror, and science fiction fandom. They are commonly referred to as the Vogels.
George Saunders is an American writer of short stories, essays, novellas, children's books, and novels. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, McSweeney's, and GQ. He also contributed a weekly column, American Psyche, to the weekend magazine of The Guardian between 2006 and 2008.
Grace Paley was an American short story author, poet, teacher, and political activist.
Lydia Davis is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes short short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of French literary classics, including Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.
Darrell Charles Schweitzer is an American writer, editor, and critic in the field of speculative fiction. Much of his focus has been on dark fantasy and horror, although he does also work in science fiction and fantasy. Schweitzer is also a prolific writer of literary criticism and editor of collections of essays on various writers within his preferred genres.
Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, John. W. Campbell, Compton Crook, Theodore Sturgeon, and Michael L. Printz awards, and has been nominated for the National Book Award. His fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the environmental journal High Country News. Nonfiction essays of his have appeared in Salon.com and High Country News, and have been syndicated in newspapers, including the Idaho Statesman, the Albuquerque Journal, and the Salt Lake Tribune.
Marion Mildred Halligan AM is an Australian writer and novelist. She was born and educated in Newcastle, New South Wales, and worked as a school teacher and journalist before publishing her first short stories. Halligan has served as chairperson of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and the Australian National Word Festival. She currently lives in Canberra.
Sybil Claiborne was a novelist, short story writer, pacifist and member of the Board of the War Resisters League, and antiwar activist. She published stories in magazines like The New Yorker and Esquire.
David Vann was born October 19, 1966 on Adak Island in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. He is a novelist and short story writer, and is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of Warwick in England. Vann received a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a National Endowment of the Arts fellow, a Wallace Stegner fellow, and a John L’Heureux fellow. His work has appeared in many magazines and newspapers. His books have been published in 23 languages and have won 14 prizes and been on 83 'best books of the year' lists. They have been selected for the New Yorker Book Club, the Times Book Club, the Samlerens Bogklub in Denmark and have been optioned for film by Inkfactory and Haut et Court. He has appeared in documentaries with the BBC, CNN, PBS, National Geographic, and E! Entertainment.
The National Book Award for Fiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which recognize outstanding literary work by United States citizens. Since 1987 the awards have been administered and presented by the National Book Foundation, but they are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists are five "writers who are known to be doing great work in their genre or field".
Doreen Baingana is a Ugandan writer and literary arts manager. Her short story collection, Tropical Fish, won the Grace Paley Award for Short Fiction in 2003 and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first book, Africa Region in 2006. Stories in it were finalists for the Caine Prize in 2004 and 2005. She has received many other awards. She is the co-founder and director of the Mawazo Africa Writing Institute based in Entebbe, Uganda.
Jonathan Dee is an American novelist and non-fiction writer. His fifth novel, The Privileges, was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Christine Sneed is an American novelist and short story writer, a graduate fiction professor at Northwestern University and for Regis University's low-residency MFA program. She is the recipient of the Chicago Public Library Foundation's 21st Century Award, Ploughshares' Zacharis Prize for a First Book, an O. Henry Prize, the Society of Midland Authors Fiction Prize, the 2009 AWP Grace Paley Prize., and other awards including the Chicago Writers' Association Book of the Year Award.
Molly Antopol is an American fiction and nonfiction writer. As of 2014 she is the Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.
Toni Graham is an American fiction writer. She is a Professor of English at Oklahoma State University; she also serves as Editor and Fiction Editor for The Cimarron Review.
