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Jeff VanderMeer

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Jeff VanderMeer
Jeff VanderMeer reading at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore, photograph by Keyan Bowes
Jeff VanderMeer reading at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore, photograph by Keyan Bowes
Born (1968-07-07) July 7, 1968 (age 56)
Bellefonte, Pennsylvania
OccupationWriter, editor, publisher
NationalityAmerican
GenreSpeculative Fiction
Fantasy
Metafiction
Science fiction
Weird
Literary movementNew Weird
SpouseAnn VanderMeer
Website
http://www.jeffvandermeer.com

Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer (born July 7, 1968) is an American writer, editor, teacher, and publisher. He has won the BSFA Award, World Fantasy Award, Nebula Award, and has been a finalist for the Hugo Award.

He is best known for his contributions to the New Weird and his stories about the city of Ambergris, in books like City of Saints and Madmen. He is also the author of the 2014 series called The Southern Reach Trilogy.

Biography

Personal life

He was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, but spent much of his childhood in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked for the Peace Corps; this stay and the trip back to the United States through Asia, Africa, and Europe, influenced him.[1]

In 2003, VanderMeer married Ann Kennedy, then editor for the small Buzzcity Press and magazine the Silver Web. Ann Vandermeer was the editor of Weird Tales magazine, and a respected anthologist and publisher. The VanderMeers live in Tallahassee, Florida.

Writing career

Jeff VanderMeer is the author of the best-selling City of Saints and Madmen, set in his signature creation, the imaginary city of Ambergris, in addition to several other novels from Bantam, Tor, and Pan Macmillan. His work, both books and short stories, has been translated into over twenty languages. The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases may be his most famous anthology, and is considered a cult classic, still in print along with his Leviathan original fiction series.

VanderMeer is the founding editor and publisher of the Ministry of Whimsy Press, up until recently on hiatus.[2] It is currently an imprint of Wyrm Publishing.[3] One of the Ministry's publications, The Troika by Stepan Chapman, won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1997.

VanderMeer's reviews and essays have appeared in The Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, and many others. He is a regular columnist for the Amazon book-culture blog, and has served as a judge for the Eisner Awards, among others, and has been a guest speaker at such diverse events as the Brisbane Writers Festival, Finncon in Helsinki, and the American Library Association annual conference. His multi-media presentations and lectures on a variety of topics have been given all over the world.

Recently, VanderMeer began to experiment in other media, resulting in a movie based on his novel Shriek that featured an original soundtrack by rock band The Church and a Play Station Europe animation of his story "A New Face in Hell" by animator Joel Veitch. Currently, VanderMeer is writing a Predator tie-in novel for Dark Horse Comics called Predator: South China Seas, and writing the introduction to Ben Templesmith’s second Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse graphic novel from IDW Publishing. Forthcoming projects in 2008 include seven anthologies (from The New Weird to a charity anthology for literacy, Last Drink Bird Head), a short film based on his story The Situation (out as a book from PS Publishing in the spring), and several novellas, including “Borne,” a sequel to The Situation.

VanderMeer's Ambergris novel, a noir thriller called Finch, was nominated for the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novel.,[4] For this book, VanderMeer approached rock band Murder By Death about recording a soundtrack for release with a limited edition of the book. The band obliged with the October 2009 release of Finch.

The Southern Reach Trilogy

In 2014, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published a new series by Jeff VanderMeer called "The Southern Reach Trilogy". The first Southern Reach novel, Annihilation was published in February 2014, and the second novel in the series, Authority, was published on 6 May 2014.[5] The last novel, Acceptance, was released in September 2014.[6] VanderMeer and the publisher decided to release the three novels in quick succession, over an 8 month period. The critical response for the series was generally positive. Slate called the trilogy, "the most uncompromising—yet most rewarding—genre series [they]’ve read in quite some time" while authors like Stephen King praised the series calling it "creepy and fascinating".[7][8] Authority earned VanderMeer a spot on the New York Times Best Sellers List for Trade Paper Backs.[9]

Teaching

In addition to editing and writing, VanderMeer has also been involved in teaching creative writing. One of the projects he is involved with is Shared Worlds, an annual two-week program that aims to teach creative writing to teenagers.[10] VanderMeer has also taught at the Clarion Workshop[11] and at Trinity Prep School. In addition to his teaching, VanderMeer has also written guides to creative writing such as Wonderbook, which won a BSFA Award,[12] a Locus Award, and was nominated for a Hugo and World Fantasy Award.[13]

Bibliography

Novels

Nonfiction

  • Why Should I Cut Your Throat?. Monkeybrain. 2004. ISBN 1-932265-11-2.
  • Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st Century Writer. Tachyon. 2009. ISBN 1-892391-90-2.
  • The Steampunk Bible. Abrams Image. 2010. ISBN 0-8109-8958-1. (With S. J. Chambers)
  • Monstrous Creatures: Explorations of Fantasy through Essays, Articles & Reviews. Guide Dog. 2011. ISBN 1-935738-03-8.
  • Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. Abrams Image. 2013. ISBN 9781419704420.

Collections

  • The Book of Frog (1989)
  • The Book of Lost Places (1996)
  • City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris (2001)
    • City of Saints and Madmen (2002, substantially expanded from the 2001 edition)
    • City of Saints and Madmen (2004, expanded from the 2002 edition)
  • The Day Dali Died (2003)
  • Secret Life (2004)
  • Why Should I Cut Your Throat? (nonfiction, 2004)
  • VanderMeer 2005 (promotional sampler, 2005)
  • Secret Lives (2006)
  • The Surgeon's Tale and Other Stories (with Cat Rambo, 2007)
  • The Third Bear (2010, Tachyon Publications)

Short fiction

Other projects

Anthologies edited

Awards

Jeff has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award 14 times.[14] He has also won an NEA-funded Florida Individual Writers’ Fellowship, and, the Le Cafard Cosmique award in France and the Tähtifantasia Award in Finland, both for City of Saints. He has also been a finalist for the Hugo Award, Bram Stoker Award, IHG Award, Philip K. Dick Award, and many others. Novels such as Veniss Underground and Shriek: An Afterword have made the year’s best lists of Amazon.com, The Austin Chronicle, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Publishers Weekly, among others.

Other Awards include:

References

  1. ^ "About the author". Macmillan. Retrieved 5 February 2014.
  2. ^ VanderWorld (under occupation): MINISTRY OF WHIMSY ON HIATUS
  3. ^ Ecstatic Days » Blog Archive » Ministry of Whimsy Press: The Resurrection
  4. ^ 2009 Nebula Awards Final Ballot
  5. ^ "Jeff VanderMeer - Authority cover art and release date reveal". Upcoming4.me. 2013-11-03. Retrieved 2013-11-04.
  6. ^ http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/08/annihilation-jeff-vandermeer-cover-reveal
  7. ^ Rogers, Mac. "The Illusions of Control".
  8. ^ King, Stephen. https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/473142392741453825. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  9. ^ "New York Time Best Sellers - Paperback Trade Fiction".
  10. ^ "Shared Worlds' 2014 Visiting Writers Announced". 2014-05-06. Retrieved 2014-05-06.
  11. ^ "2014 Clarion Instructors". Retrieved 28 May 2014.
  12. ^ BSFA Award for Best Non-Fiction#2013
  13. ^ Hugo Award for Best Related Work
  14. ^ "About". Retrieved 3 June 2014.
  15. ^ World Fantasy Convention (2010). "Award Winners and Nominees". Retrieved 4 Feb 2011.
  16. ^ http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/08/2009-world-fantasy-awards-nominees/
  17. ^ http://www.bsfa.co.uk/bsfa-award-winners-announced "BSFA Award winners announced", accessed on 3 May 2014
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