The Scribblies

Last updated

The Scribblies were a fantasy fiction group of writers formed in the U.S. city of Minneapolis in January 1980. Members included Nate Bucklin, Emma Bull, Steven Brust, Kara Dalkey, Pamela Dean, Will Shetterly and Patricia Wrede. [1] At the time, they shared the same editor and literary agent. [2]

The Scribblies (Minneapolis writer's group) in 1985 The Scribblies.jpg
The Scribblies (Minneapolis writer's group) in 1985

These authors all contributed short stories in the Liavek anthologies. Liavek was a shared-world series edited by Emma Bull and Will Shetterly. [3]

The name "Scribblies" is a joke inspired by the Industrial Workers of the World, "the Wobblies". It also derives from Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh's comment to Edward Gibbon upon receiving the second (or third, or possibly both) volume(s) of Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire "Another damned thick book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?" [3]

Notes

  1. Novel Spaces, http://novelspaces.blogspot.com/2010/07/guest-author-patricia-wrede-group-of.html Patricia C. Wrede, "A Group of One's Own" 31-Jul-2010, retrieved 21-Aug-2014
  2. Ringel, Faye (1994). "The Scribblies: A Shared World". Extrapolation. 35 (3).
  3. 1 2 Encyclopedia of Fantasy, John Clute and John Grant, St. Martin's Press, 1997, p. 845


Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Brust</span> American fantasy and science fiction author (born 1955)

Steven Karl Zoltán Brust is an American fantasy and science fiction author of Hungarian descent. He is best known for his series of novels about the assassin Vlad Taltos, one of a disdained minority group of humans living on a world called Dragaera. His recent novels also include The Incrementalists (2013) and its sequel The Skill of Our Hands (2017), with co-author Skyler White.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John M. Ford</span> American writer, game designer, and poet

John Milo "Mike" Ford was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, game designer, and poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Bull</span> American novelist

Emma Bull is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Her novels include the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Bone Dance and the urban fantasy War for the Oaks. She is also known for a series of anthologies set in Liavek, a shared universe that she created with her husband, Will Shetterly. As a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, she has been a member of the Minneapolis-based folk/rock bands Cats Laughing and The Flash Girls.

The Flash Girls are a now defunct folk music duo based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The duo consisted of Emma Bull, a noted science fiction author, and Lorraine Garland, also known as "The Fabulous Lorraine". Garland is also notable as Neil Gaiman's personal assistant; the group formed at a Guy Fawkes Day party at Gaiman's home. The connections that both Bull and Garland had with the science fiction and fantasy communities allowed them to have an unusually notable group of people writing songs for and with them, including Jane Yolen, Alan Moore, and Neil Gaiman. These songs are mixed in with their own original works, traditional songs such as Star of the County Down and Lily of the West, as well as poems put to music, including works by Dorothy Parker and A.A. Milne.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia Wrede</span> American author

Patricia Collins Wrede is an American author of fantasy literature. She is known for her Enchanted Forest Chronicles series for young adults, which was voted number 84 in NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels list.

The fantasy of manners is a subgenre of fantasy literature that also partakes of the nature of a comedy of manners. Such works generally take place in an urban setting and within the confines of a fairly elaborate, and almost always hierarchical, social structure. The term was first used in print by science fiction critic Donald G. Keller in an article, The Manner of Fantasy, in the April 1991 issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pamela Dean</span> American novelist

Pamela Collins Dean Dyer-Bennet, better known as Pamela Dean, is an American fantasy author whose best-known book is Tam Lin, based on the Child Ballad of the same name, in which the Scottish fairy story is set on a midwestern college campus loosely based on her alma mater, Carleton College in Minnesota.

The Pre-Joycean Fellowship, abbreviated PJF, is a collective identification that was semi-seriously adopted by several writers known for fantasy and science fiction, to indicate that they value 19th-century values of storytelling. An example of such values is clarity, which was called by Jane Yolen the "lovely limpid quality" of writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terri Windling</span> American writer and editor

Terri Windling is an American editor, artist, essayist, and the author of books for both children and adults. She has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award, and her collection The Armless Maiden appeared on the short-list for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Will Shetterly</span> American fantasy and science fiction author

Will Shetterly is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction best known for his novel Dogland (1997). The novel is inspired by his childhood at the tourist attraction Dog Land owned by his parents. He won the Minnesota Book Award for Fantasy & Science Fiction for his novel Elsewhere (1991), and was a finalist with Nevernever (1993); both books are set in Terri Windling's The Borderland Series shared universe. He has also written short stories for various Borderland anthologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Stevermer</span> American writer

Caroline Stevermer is an American writer of young adult fantasy novels and shorter works. She is best known for historical fantasy novels.

Liavek is a series of five fantasy anthologies edited by Emma Bull and Will Shetterly set in a shared world.

Kara Mia Dalkey is an American author of young adult fiction and historical fantasy.

Year's Best Fantasy and Horror was a reprint anthology published annually by St. Martin's Press from 1987 to 2008. In addition to the short stories, supplemented by a list of honorable mentions, each edition included a number of retrospective essays by the editors and others. The first two anthologies were originally published under the name The Year's Best Fantasy before the title was changed beginning with the third book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cats Laughing</span> Folk rock band from Minneapolis

Cats Laughing is a folk rock band, founded in the late 1980s in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and revived in 2015. Several of its members, including Emma Bull and best-selling author Steven Brust, are better known as writers of fantasy and science fiction.

The Borderland series of urban fantasy novels and stories were created for teenage readers by author Terri Windling. Most of the series is set in Bordertown, a dystopian city near the border between "the Elflands" and "The World". The series consists of five anthologies and three novels. The series has spawned fan groups, gaming groups, costumed events, and was discussed in The Fence and the River: Culture and Politics at the US-Mexico Border by Claire F. Fox.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gregory Frost</span> American novelist

Gregory Frost is an American author of science fiction and fantasy, and directs a fiction writing workshop at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa. A graduate of the Clarion Workshop, he has been invited back as instructor several times, including the first session following its move to the University of California at San Diego in 2007. He is also active in the Interstitial Arts Foundation.

<i>Book of Enchantments</i> Short story collection by Patricia Wrede (1996)

Book of Enchantments is a collection of short stories written by American fantasy author Patricia C. Wrede. It was first published in hardcover by Harcourt Brace in 1996, and was subsequently issued in paperback by Point Fantasy in 1998 and in trade paperback by Magic Carpet Books in 2005. Five of the stories had appeared previously in the anthologies Liavek: The Players of Luck, edited by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull, The Unicorn Treasury, edited by Bruce Coville, Tales of the Witch World 3, edited by Andre Norton, A Wizard's Dozen, edited by Michael Stearns, and Black Thorn, White Rose, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Hobb bibliography</span>

This is a complete list of works by American author Robin Hobb, the pen name of Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, who also writes under the pen names Megan Lindholm.