Firebirds Soaring

Nancy Farmer grew up on the Arizona-Mexico border, did a tour of duty with the Peace Corps in India in the mid-’60s, and lived in South Africa and Zimbabwe in the ’70s and ’80s. Her novelette The Mirror won the 1987 Gold Award in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. Her first book, Do You Know Me?, a children’s adventure set in Zimbabwe, received an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. She received Newbery Honors for A Girl Named Disaster; The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm; and The House of the Scorpion, which also won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and a Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book for Young People’s Literature. She and her husband currently live in Menlo Park, California.

Carol Emshwiller is the author of many acclaimed novels and story collections, including Carmen Dog, The Start of the End of It All (winner of the World Fantasy Award), Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories, I Live with You and You Don’t Know It, and The Mount (winner of the Philip K. Dick Award and a Nebula Award finalist). She teaches in the New York University continuing education program, and divides her time between homes in New York City and California. Visit Emshwiller online at www.sfwa.org/members/emshwiller.

Sherwood Smith started making books out of paper towels at age six. In between stories, she studied and traveled in Europe, got a master’s degree in history, and now lives in Southern California with her spouse, two kids, and two dogs. Smith’s the author of the high fantasy Sartorias-deles series as well as the modern-day fantasy adventures of Kim Murray in Coronets and Steel. Learn more at sherwoodsmith.net.

Laurel Winter (born Laurel Anne Hjelvik) is the author of fantasy, science fiction, and poetry. In childhood she attended a one-room schoolhouse. Her first published fantasy story was “Mail Order Eyes” in 1988. She has since won two Rhysling Awards and a World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. She has also written young adult fiction.