Curated category
American fantasy writers
- Stephen KingStephen King was walking on the shoulder of Maine State Route 5 on the 19th of June 1999 when a minivan struck him and sent him into a depression in the…
- Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was found semiconscious on the streets of Baltimore on the 3rd of October, 1849, wearing clothes that were not his own.
- H. P. LovecraftH. P. Lovecraft died on the 15th of March 1937 in Providence, Rhode Island, virtually unknown to the reading public. He was 46 years old, hospitalized with…
- Poul AndersonPoul William Anderson was born on the 25th of November 1926 in Bristol, Pennsylvania, to Danish parents who would soon uproot the family and carry it across…
- Edgar Rice BurroughsEdgar Rice Burroughs was born on the 1st of September, 1875, in Chicago, Illinois, the fourth son of Major George Tyler Burroughs, a Civil War veteran and…
- John JakesJohn William Jakes sold his first short story in 1950, and by the time he died in Sarasota on the 11th of March 2023, he had put tens of millions of books…
- George R. R. MartinGeorge Raymond Richard Martin was born on the 20th of September, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of a longshoreman.
- L. Sprague de Camp"My own true name sounds more like a pseudonym than most pseudonyms do," L. Sprague de Camp said, explaining why he rarely used pen names.
- Lin CarterLin Carter published his first letter in a pulp magazine in 1943, when he was thirteen years old. By the time he died in February 1988, he had written an…
- Dave WolvertonJohn David Wolverton arrived in Springfield, Oregon on the 28th of May 1957. His family moved to a farm in Monroe when he was six years old.
- David BenioffDavid Benioff was born David Friedman on the 25th of September, 1970, the youngest of three children in a Jewish family in New York City.
- Robert E. HowardRobert E. Howard died on the morning of the 11th of June 1936 at age thirty, having first asked a nurse whether his mother would ever wake from her coma.
- Fletcher PrattMurray Fletcher Pratt stood before a grand jury in February 1916 after police arrested him for stealing less than twenty-five dollars from newspaper cash…
- Roger ZelaznyRoger Zelazny spent his evenings writing science fiction while working a day job at the U.S. Social Security Administration.
- Gary GygaxGary Gygax grew up close enough to Wrigley Field that he could hear the roar of the crowds from his bedroom window. That detail matters, because it tells you…
- Jack VanceJack Vance published his first story in the summer of 1945 in Thrilling Wonder Stories. It ran sixteen pages. Over the next seven decades, he would go on to…
- A. MerrittA. Merritt earned $100,000 a year by the end of his life, but the work he is remembered for was never his day job. Abraham Grace Merritt, born on the 20th of…
- Fritz LeiberFritz Reuter Leiber Jr. was born on the 24th of December 1910, in Chicago, Illinois, into a household where Shakespeare was practically a family business.
- Frank MentzerFrank Mentzer, born Jacob Franklin Mentzer III, stood in the White House gardens in 1972. The National Park Service had hired him to play a concert for…
- James Wyatt (game designer)James Wyatt was writing adventures for Dungeon magazine while serving as the minister of two small United Methodist churches in southeastern Ohio.
- John Eric HolmesJohn Eric Holmes spent his career mapping the human brain, but the worlds that consumed his imagination lay far beneath the earth's surface, in forgotten…
- Alan Dean FosterAlan Dean Foster, born on the 18th of November 1946, is the kind of writer whose name you might not immediately recognize, but whose words you have almost…
- Leigh BrackettLeigh Brackett was born on the 7th of December 1915 in Los Angeles, California, and by the time she died in March 1978, she had left her mark on science…