The Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books is partnering with the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) which is an international organization for authors, artists, and other industry professionals who are involved with science fiction, fantasy, and related genres.  For the 2013 Festival, 28 members will participate on panels and talk about graphic novels, how a book gets made, science fiction gaming, glitter and mayhem, zombies and more. 

Bradley P. Beaulieu returned to writing several years ago after realizing his love of writing and telling tales was not going to “slink quietly into the night.” His novels have garnered many accolades Beaulieuand most anticipated lists, including two Hotties—the Debut of the Year and Best New Voice—on Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, a Gemmell Morningstar Award nomination for The Winds of Khalakovo, and more. In May, Beaulieu released two new titles: The Flames of Shadam Khoreh, the concluding volume of The Lays of Anuskaya epic fantasy trilogy, and Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories, a short story collection. Beaulieu also co-hosts Speculate! The Podcast for Writers, Readers, and Fans at www.speculatesf.com. For more, please visit www.quillings.com.

OriginBethke4ally from Milwaukee, Bruce Bethke now lives and works in Minnesota. In science fiction circles he’s best known for either his genre-naming 1983 short story, “Cyberpunk,” his Philip K. Dick Memorial Award-winning 1995 novel, Headcrash, or currently, as the editor of STUPEFYING STORIES magazine. In the real world Bethke actually works in supercomputer software development, but this work is nearly impossible to explain to anyone not already well-grounded in MPP architectures, scatter/gather algorithms, and Fourier transform equations. Bethke can be contacted through his  website, http://www.brucebethke.com.

Alex Bledsoe is the author of the Eddie LaCrosse high fantasy/hardboiled mysteries, The Sword-Edged Blonde, Burn Me Deadly, Dark Jenny, and Wake of the Bloody BledsoeAngel, two novels about vampires in 1975 Memphis, Blood Groove and The Girls with Games of Blood, the Tufa novels, The Hum and the Shiver and the upcoming Wisp of a Thing, and the Firefly Witch short story e-book chapbook. He grew up in west Tennessee, an hour north of Graceland, and now lives in a Wisconsin town famous for its trolls.

ChwedykScience fiction writer Richard Chwedyk has been kicking around Chicago for more years than he cares to be reminded of. He currently teaches the Science Fiction Writing Workshop at Columbia College in Chicago and also teaches an introductory class, Exploring Science Fiction. He has written a novelette and numerous stories, poems, and articles, and has, as he says,” far too many works in progress!”

All aspects of writing appear to be deeply engrossing for Janet Deaver-Pack. She says she sold her first fantasy stories in the late 1980’s and hasn’t stopped writing since. She has Deaver-Packalso co-authored two role-playing game source books, written music, edited four anthologies, co-authored two novels with her partner Bruce A. Heard, and written reviews and area highlights for various Milwaukee periodicals. Deaver-Pack provides writing seminars, tutors adults and children, and is a popular panelist at fantasy and science fiction conventions.

fliss (2)Archivist Bill Fliss works in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at Marquette University’s Raynor Library. In this capacity he’s in charge of the 11,000 J.R.R. Tolkien papers that the university owns, a Tolkien collection that is the largest in the world. Fliss will bring his expertise to this year’s Festival of Books in a panel discussion on science fiction and fantasy archives.

Matt Forbeck has been a full-time creator of award-winning games and fiction since 1989, designing games and toys and writing stories of all sorts.Forbeck sf He has 23 novels published to date, including the award-nominated Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon and the critically acclaimed Amortals and Vegas Knights. His latest work includes the Magic: The Gathering comic book, the MMOs Marvel Heroes and Ghost Recon Online, and his novel The Con Job, based on the TV show Leverage. For more about him and his work, visit www.forbeck.com.

Lisa Hager is Assistant Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Waukesha. Her current book project lookHagers at the relationship between the New Woman and the Victorian family. Hager is the managing editor for the Journal of Victorian Culture Online, and her work on steampunk and Firefly is featured in The Philosophy of Joss Whedon. She is an active member of the steampunk community and coordinates sessions on gender identity and sexuality at TeslaCon.

Hodgell2P. C. Hodgell can’t remember a time when she wasn’t passionately interested in science fiction and fantasy. After many years of teaching composition, literature, and creative writing at UW-Oshkosh, she retired to take up writing full-time. She has written a critically praised fantasy saga which is concerned not only with high adventure, but also with questions of personal identity, religion, politics, honor, and arboreal drift. Hodgell lives in Oshkosh in a nineteenth-century house that has been in her family for generations.

 Klima-112x150[1]John Klima previously worked at Asimov’s, Analog, and Tor Books before returning to school to earn his Master’s in Library and Information Science. He now works full time as the assistant director of a large public library. When he is not conquering the world of indexing, Klima edits and publishes the Hugo Award-winning genre zine Electric Velocipede. The magazine is also a four-time nominee for the World Fantasy Award. In 2007 Klima edited an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories based on spelling-bee winning words called Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories. He and his family live in the Midwest.

Gary KloKloster 2ster is a writer, a stay-at-home-father, a martial artist and a reference librarian – sometimes all in the same day, seldom all at the same time. His fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, the Intergalactic Medicine Show and in Writers of the Future 25.

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of Shades of Milk and Honey, Glamour in Glass, and Without a Summer. In 2008 she Kowalreceived the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2011, her short story For Want of a Nail won the Hugo Award for Short Story. Her work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. Kowal, a professional puppeteer, also performs as a voice actor, recording fiction for authors such as Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi. She lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Visit www.maryrobinettekowal.com.

As writer and voice over director for Raven Software in Middleton, Bob Love has worked on titles like the X-Men Legends series, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Wolfenstein, and Singularity. He’s also been lucky enough to work with talented actors like Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Ed Asner. In his spare time, Love writes and directs Indie movies; currently in production is a full-length film called Dead of the Night.

JamLowder close upes Lowder has worked extensively on both sides of the editorial blotter.  As a writer, his publications include the bestselling, widely translated dark fantasy novels Prince of Lies and Knight of the Black Rose, short fiction for such anthologies as Shadows Over Baker Street and The Repentant, and comic book scripts for Image, DC, and Moonstone. He’s written roleplaying game products and hundreds of feature articles, columns, and film and book reviews. As an editor, Lowder has directed book lines series and has helmed such critically acclaimed anthologies as Hobby Games: The 100 Best, Curse of the Full Moon, the Books of Flesh trilogy, and Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.  Beyond the Wall explores Martin’s Game of Thrones, the popular HBO series and fantasy novels upon which it is based. His work has been nominated for the International Horror Guild Award and the Stoker Award, and has received five Origins Awards and an ENnie Award. For additional information, check out his web site: http://www.jameslowder.com.

McDowell SFHolly McDowell lived in Colorado, Georgia, and South Carolina before discovering the magical city of Chicago. Now, she can be spotted drinking glögg, searching for the world’s best tapas bar and writing in coffee shops all over the windy city. Her current project is an interactive, digital series called King Solomon’s Wives, a modern thriller set against a backdrop of historical conspiracy. The “interactive” part means readers get to vote on the direction of the story, and McDowell is having a blast working in her readers’ favorite characters and locales.

First discovering comics when his father gave him The Amazing Spider-Man #163 even before he could read, Mike Norton is now a comic book artist and writer himself. In 2011 he launched his web comic, Battlebpug, a sword and sorcery story, for which he won the Best Digital Comic Eisner award. Along with Battlepug and Revival, a series that debuted to critical acclaim, Norton is the artist selected for the comic book adaptation of the upcoming Young Justice series.

NyeAuthor or co-author of at least forty published novels and over one hundred short stories, Jody Lynn Nye specializes in science fiction, fantasy action, and humor. She has been an instructor of the Fantasy Writing Workshop at Columbia College in Chicago and teaches the annual Science Fiction Writing Workshop at DragonCon.

A published science fiction author and member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Aaron Schutz is also Associate Professor and Educational Policy and schutzCommunity Studies Chair at UW-Milwaukee. His academic research focuses on community organizing for social change in urban communities as well as on theories of democracy and democratic education, while The League of Almost Superheroes: Stories is his latest science fiction endeavor.

SilverSteven H Silver has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer eleven times and Best Fanzine three times. Silver is known as an on-line reviewer and has written several articles for science fiction fanzines. He has also published his own annual fanzine, Argentus. In addition to his writing and editing activities, Silver is involved in running science fiction conventions.

Smith, kKristine Smith was born in Buffalo, NY.  She grew up in Florida, and graduated from the University of South Florida with a BS in Chemistry.  She’s spent almost her entire working career in manufacturing/R&D of one kind or another, and has worked for the same northern Illinois pharmaceutical company for over 25 years. She is the winner of the 2001 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and is the author of the Jani Kilian SF series as well as a number of short stories.  She is currently working on several projects, and wishes she possessed a time-turner.

SullivanSince 1980, as a writer, artist, and editor, Stephen D. Sullivan has worked on some of the best known and most influential properties in the world, including: Dungeons & Dragons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, The Simpsons, Middle Earth, Fantastic 4, Speed Racer, and many others. He has written dozens of novels and stories in the fantasy, science fiction, adventure, horror, and detective genres and won the Origins Award, gaming’s highest honor, for his fantasy fiction twice.

Two-time Hugo Award winner Lynne M. Thomas is the Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, ILthomas-lynne, where she is responsible for popular culture special collections that include the literary papers of over 60 SF/F authors. She is perhaps best known as the co-editor of the Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords with Tara O’Shea, Whedonistas with Deborah Stanish, and Chicks Dig Comics with Sigrid Ellis. Along with the Geek Girl Chronicles book series, Thomas is the Editor-in-Chief of the Hugo Award-nominated Apex Magazine, an online professional prose and poetry magazine of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Michael Damian Thomas (3)Michael Damian Thomas is the Hugo Award-nominated Managing Editor of Apex Magazine and a former Associate Editor at Mad Norwegian Press. He is a co-editor of the Doctor Who essay anthology Queers Dig Time Lords with Sigrid Ellis and the Glitter & Mayhem anthology with Lynne M. Thomas and John Klima.

A lifelong sci-fi fan, Patrick S. Tomlinson discovered quite by accident that the best stories were not to be found on the silver screen, but on the gleaming white pagesTomlinson of books. Tomlinson lives in Milwaukee where the winters offer a wonderful opportunity to disappear into his writing cave for months at a stretch, emerging only briefly each week to watch the Packer game. He has recently published his first book, The Wererat’s Tale: The Collar of Perdition.

verstraete 2Girl Z: My Life as a Teenage Zombie, Christine A. Verstraete’s new book out this summer, gives a realistic view of a chaotic new world from a self-absorbed teenager’s tunnel vision. A favorite pastime of Verstraete’s, building dollhouses and miniature rooms, has served as inspiration for a children’s mystery, Searching for a Starry Night: A Miniature Art Mystery. Among her nonfiction works is a book on Wisconsin dog rescuers.

Bill Willingham has been writing, and occasionally drawing, funnybooks for close to 30 years now. He also writes prose fiction as well. He iWillingham 2s best known for creating the following comic book series: Elementals; Ironwood; Coventry; Pantheon; Proposition Player; Shadowpact; Fables and Fairest. Willingham lives in the wild and frosty woods of Minnesota.

 

Yela 2Head of the Special Collections Department at the UW-Milwaukee Libraries, Max Yela is also an Adjunct Instructor at UWM where he teaches Book Arts Concepts, Book Arts Survey, Independent Reading and Research, and History of Books and Printing. In addition, he curates several exhibits a year and serves as the official library liaison to the Department of Art & Design.

 ZambrenoPicMary Frances Zambreno decided to become a writer at the age of twelve, when she first realized that writers were just people who wanted to tell stories.  Along the way to becoming a writer, she became a teacher, earned a doctorate in medieval literature, and learned to read six languages (including English).  Currently, she teaches at Elmhurst College, in Elmhurst, Illinois. Her works include Young Adult fantasy novel A Plague of Sorcerers, its sequel Journeyman Wizard, and short story collection Invisible Pleasures.