Search Results for: childhood

M. M. Kaye (1908-2004) was born in India and spent most of her early childhood and much of her early married life there. Her grandfather, father, brother and husband all served the Raj, and her ties with India remained strong throughout her life. When the country achieved independence her husband joined the British Army and for the next nineteen years she lived in numerous locations around the world, including Kenya, Zanzibar, Egypt, Cyprus and Germany. M. M. Kaye is well known for her highly successful historical novels, The Far Pavilions, Trade Wind and Shadow of the Moon. The Death In . . . series led one American critic to suggest that ‘M. M. Kaye outdoes Agatha Christie in palming the ace’. All six titles are available from The Murder Room.

Cornell Woolrich (1903-68) was born in New York but spent much of his childhood being shunted between his father, a civil engineer in Latin America, and his mother who was socially prominent in New York. In the early 1929s he went to Columbia College but left before graduating to write. He published six novels before his first crime story appeared in 1934. His first mystery novel, The Bride Wore Black, appeared in 1940 and very quickly established itself as a classic of the genre. When he died he left an estate of close to a million dollars to Columbia University for scholarships in creative writing.

Mercedes Lackey (1950-) Mercedes entered this world on June 24, 1950, in Chicago, had a normal childhood and graduated from Purdue University in 1972. During the late 70’s she worked as an artist’s model and then went into the computer programming field, ending up with American Airlines in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to her fantasy writing, she has written lyrics for and recorded nearly fifty songs for Firebird Arts & Music, a small recording company specializing in science fiction folk music.

W.H. Hudson was born in Argentina in 1841 and he died in London in 1922. His book Far Away and Long Ago is a brilliant evocation of his childhood in Argentina.

Robert Holdstock (1948 – 2009) Robert Paul Holdstock was born in a remote corner of Kent, sharing his childhood years between the bleak Romney Marsh and the dense woodlands of the Kentish heartlands. He received an MSc in medical zoology and spent several years in the early 1970s in medical research before becoming a full-time writer in 1976. His first published story appeared in the New Worlds magazine in 1968 and for the early part of his career he wrote science fiction. However, it is with fantasy that he is most closely associated. 1984 saw the publication of Mythago Wood, winner of the BSFA and World Fantasy Awards for Best Novel, and widely regarded as one of the key texts of modern fantasy. It and the subsequent ‘mythago’ novels (including Lavondyss, which won the BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1988) cemented his reputation as the definitive portrayer of the wild wood. His interest in Celtic and Nordic mythology was a consistent theme throughout his fantasy and is most prominently reflected in the acclaimed Merlin Codex trilogy, consisting of Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings, published between 2001 and 2007. Among many other works, Holdstock co-wrote Tour of the Universe with Malcolm Edwards, for which rights were sold for a space shuttle simulation ride at the CN Tower in Toronto, and The Emerald Forest, based on John Boorman’s film of the same name. His story, ‘The Ragthorn’, written with friend and fellow author Garry Kilworth, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and the BSFA Award for Short Fiction. Robert Holdstock died in November 2009, just four months after the publication of Avilion, the long-awaited, and sadly final, return to Ryhope Wood. http://www.robertholdstock.com

Margaret St Clair (1911-1995) Margaret St Clair was an American science fiction writer who wrote mostly under her own name, but published a number of titles under the pseudonyms Idris Seabright and Wilton Hazzard. Born in Hutchinson, Kansas, St Clair had no siblings and recalled her childhood as ‘rather a lonely and bookish one’. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932 and in 1934 she earned a Master of Arts in Greek Classics. Her sf career began with ‘Rocket to Limbo’ for Fantastic Adventures in November 1946 and by 1950 she had published about 30 more stories. From the outset of her career, St. Clair was aware of her unusual role as a woman writing in a male-dominated field. An article she wrote for Writer’s Digest in 1947, about selling stories to the science fiction market, begins: ‘Why is science fiction fun to write? At first blush, it doesn’t seem attractive, particularly for a woman.’ A lifelong supporter of the American Friends Service Committee, she spent her final years at Friends House in Santa Rosa, California. She died in 1995.

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. This, coupled with a childhood tendency toward reading the dictionary, doomed her early to penury, intransigence and the writing of speculative fiction. She is a recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and a Locus Award, and has been nominated for the BSFA, Philip K. Dick and Lambda awards. She lives in southern New England with a presumptuous cat and her hobbies include archery, guitar and the indiscriminate slaughter of defenseless houseplants.