Shared Worlds, a unique summer writing camp for rising 8th through 12th graders, takes place July 15-28 at Wofford College. Faculty authors including Jeff VanderMeer and Charlie Jane Anders will read their works over two evenings (July 17 and 24) at the Hub City Bookshop.
Reading scheduled for July 17:
Charlie Jane Anders
Jeff VanderMeer
Readings scheduled for July 24:
Gwenda Bond
John Chu
Julia Elliott
Hiromo Goto
Ekaterina Sedia
Leah Thomas
Ann VanderMeer
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All the Birds in the Sky, which won the Nebula, Locus and Crawford awards and was on Time Magazine’s list of the 10 best novels of 2016. Her Tor.com story “Six Months, Three Days” won a Hugo Award and appears in a new short story collection called Six Months, Three Days, Five Others. Her short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Wired Magazine, Slate, Tin House, Conjunctions, Boston Review, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, ZYZZYVA*, and several anthologies. She was a founding editor of io9.com, a site about science fiction, science and futurism, and she organizes the monthly Writers With Drinks reading series. Her first novel, Choir Boy, won a Lambda Literary Award.
Jeff VanderMeer is an award-winning novelist and editor, and author of the New York Times bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy—the first volume of which, Annihilation, is currently being made into movie to be released by Scott Rubin/Paramount this year. His latest novel, Borne, will be published by MCD/FSG April 25th, 2017 and has been optioned by Paramount. His fiction has been translated into thirty-five languages and has appeared in the Library of America’s American Fantastic Tales, Conjunctions, and multiple year’s-best anthologies as well as on such sites as Slate and Vulture.
VanderMeer grew up in the Fiji Islands and spent time traveling through Asia, Africa, and Europe before returning to the United States. These travels have deeply influenced his fiction. He is the recipient of an NEA-funded Florida Individual Artist Fellowship for excellence in fiction and a Florida Artist Enhancement Grant. A three-time winner of the World Fantasy Award and fifteen-time finalist, VanderMeer has also won the Shirley Jackson Award and Nebula Award as well as been a finalist for the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
In addition to his writing, VanderMeer has edited or co-edited several anthologies, including Best American Fantasy, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction. His award-winning Wonderbook is the world’s first fully illustrated creative writing book. He also writes for The NY Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic Online, Electric Literature, LitHub, and many others. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, Ann VanderMeer, and two cats.
Gwenda Bond writes YA and children’s fiction. Her novels include the Lois Lane series (Fallout, Double Down, and Triple Threat), which bring the iconic comic book character front and center in her own YA novels, and the Cirque American series (Girl on a Wire, Girl Over Paris, Girl in the Shadows), about daredevil heroines who discover magic and mystery lurking under the big top. She and her husband author Christopher Rowe launched a middle grade series, the Supernormal Sleuthing Service, in 2017 with The Lost Legacy.
Her nonfiction writing has appeared in Publishers Weekly, Locus Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. She has an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in a hundred-year-old house in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and their unruly pets. There are rumors she escaped from a screwball comedy, and she might have a journalism degree because of her childhood love of Lois Lane.
John Chu is a microprocessor architect by day, a writer, translator, and podcast narrator by night. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming at Boston Review, Uncanny, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and Tor.com among other venues. His translations have been published or is forthcoming at Clarkesworld, The Big Book of SF and other venues. His story “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” won the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.
Julia Elliott’s writing has appeared in Tin House, The Georgia Review, Conjunctions, The New York Times, and other publications. She has won a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and her stories have been anthologized in Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses and Best American Short Stories. Her debut story collection, The Wilds, a was chosen by Kirkus, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, and Electric Literature as one of the Best Books of 2014 and was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her first novel, The New and Improved Romie Futch, arrived in October 2015.
Hiromi Goto is an emigrant from Japan who gratefully resides on the Unceded Musqueam, Skwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil Waututh Territories. Her first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms, was the 1995 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book, Canada and Caribbean Region, and co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Award. Her second adult novel, The Kappa Child, was awarded the 2001 James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. Her YA novel, Half World, was the recipient of the Sunburst Award and the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. She’s published two more novels for children and youth, a book of poetry, and a collection of short stories (adult). Hiromi is a mentor in The Writer’s Studio Program at Simon Fraser University, a mentor for The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, and is a board member of Plenitude magazine. Hiromi has a graphic novel pending with First Second Books. She is currently at work trying to decolonize her relationship to the land and to be a responsible guest on Turtle Island.
Ekaterina Sedia resides in the Pinelands of New Jersey. Her critically-acclaimed and award-nominated novels, The Secret History of Moscow, The Alchemy of Stone, The House of Discarded Dreams, and Heart of Iron, were published by Prime Books. Her short stories appeared in Analog, Baen’s Universe, Subterranean, and Clarkesworld, as well as numerous anthologies, including Haunted Legends and Magic in the Mirrorstone. She is also the editor of the anthologies Paper Cities (World Fantasy Award winner), Running with the Pack, Bewere the Night, and Bloody Fabulous as well as The Mammoth Book of Gaslit Romance and Wilful Impropriety. Her short-story collection, Moscow But Dreaming, was released by Prime Books in December 2012. She also co-wrote a script for YAMASONG: MARCH OF THE HOLLOWS, a fantasy feature-length puppet film voiced by Nathan Fillion, George Takei, Abigail Breslin, and Whoopi Goldberg to be released by Dark Dunes Productions.
Leah Thomas frequently loses battles of wits against her students and her stories. When she’s not huddled in cafes, she’s usually at home pricking her fingers in service of cosplay. Leah lives in San Diego, California and is the author of Nowhere Near You and the William C. Morris YA Debut Award finalist, Because You’ll Never Meet Me.
Ann VanderMeer serves as the Shared Worlds editor-in-residence. Over a 30-year career, she has won numerous awards for her editing work, including the Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award. Whether as editor-in-chief for Weird Tales for five years or in her current role as an acquiring editor for Tor.com, Ann has built her reputation on acquiring fiction from diverse and interesting new talents. As co-founder of Cheeky Frawg Books, she has helped develop a wide-ranging line of mostly translated fiction. Featuring a who’s who of world literature, Ann’s anthologies include the critically acclaimed Best American Fantasy series, The Weird, The Time Traveler’s Almanac, Sisters of the Revolution, and the Big Book of Science Fiction (Vintage, 2016).
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