All month long, The Center for Fiction in New York City is celebrating Ursula K. Le Guin and science fiction and fantasy with a series of panels and events. (You can see the full schedule here.)
Tonight, a panel of all-star consisting of John Wray, N.K. Jemisin, Ellen Kushner, Michael Swanwick, and David G. Hartwell discusses Le Guin herself and how Earthsea and other books have influenced a generation of new writers! Check out below the cut for full details.
John Wray was born in Washington, DC in 1971. His three published novels, The Right Hand of Sleep, Canaan’s Tongue and Lowboy, have earned him numerous awards and distinctions, including a Whiting Award, a KEN fiction award, and the 2010 Mary Ellen Van der Heyden Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. In 2007,Grantaincluded him on its list of best American novelists under the age of 35. In addition to writing fiction, Wray is a regular contributor to Esquire, Spin, and The New York Times Magazine. He currently lives in Brooklyn.
N. K. Jemisin is a Brooklyn-based writer of short stories and novels. Her first novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, was published in 2010 by Orbit Books and has been nominated for ten awards including the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. She is currently at work on her fifth novel, also due out from Orbit, in 2012. Her work can be found at her website, http://nkjemisin.com.
Ellen Kushner, novelist, performer and public radio personality, may be best known as the host of the long-running series Sound & Spirit, which Bill Moyers called “the best thing on public radio.” Her award-winning novels include the “mannerpunk” cult classic Swordspoint, and Thomas the Rhymer (World Fantasy Award). Kushner’s children’s story, The Golden Dreydl: a Klezmer ‘Nutcracker’, has been produced as a CD (with Shirim Klezmer Orchestra), a picture book, and onstage by New York’s Vital Theatre. 2011 saw the national broadcast of her musical radio drama “The Witches of Lublin” (co-written by Elizabeth Schwartz and Yale Strom) and the publication of Welcome to Bordertown (co-edited with Holly Black). She is a co-founder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, and lives in New York City. Visit her website http://www.ellenkushner.com.
Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed and prolific science fiction and fantasy writers of his generation. His work has been honored with the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards as well five Hugos and nominations for the British Science Fiction Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Swanwick’s new novel, Dancing With Bears, featuring post-Utopian confidence swindlers Darger and Surplus, published by Night Shade Books, is currently on the stands. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter.
David G. Hartwell is a senior editor at Tor Books.
Stubby the Rocket is the voice and mascot of Tor.com. Pick up Stubby’s portrait on a free button at the Center for Fiction.
