Naomi Kritzer

Author Guest of Honor

Naomi Kritzer was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina while her father was writing his dissertation, and lived in Indiana and Texas before settling in Madison, Wisconsin for most of her childhood. She started writing when all her friends outgrew games of pretend. Her first attempt at writing a novel involved a talking blue-eyed horse and borrowed most of its plotline from the TV version of Puff: the Magic Dragon. (In her defense, she was nine years old at the time.) She started submitting her stories for publication when she was in high school, and listed her rejection letters as noteworthy accomplishments on one of her college applications.

She moved to Minnesota in 1991 to attend Carleton College, where she majored in Religion. She mostly wrote nothing but academic papers for the next four years, but during one summer she wrote a short story called “Magefire” that years later she used as the base for her first novel. (This novel was split into two books when it was published by Bantam, Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm.)

Naomi joined the Wyrdsmiths writing group in 1997; she is still a member, along with Lyda Morehouse, Kelly McCullough, and Eleanor Arnason. On the day before Halloween in 1999, she wrecked her car on the way to work one morning, and sold her first story to Realms of Fantasy in the afternoon.

Naomi is happily married with two daughters—Molly, born in September of 2000, and Kiera, born in September of 2003. Molly wants to be a writer like her mother, and writes and illustrates Happy Hollisters fanfic in books she staples together herself.

Ms. Kritzer is also the author of three fantasy novels in her “Dead Rivers” series: Freedom’s Gate (2004), Freedom’s Apprentice (2005), and Freedom’s Sisters (2006), and short fiction in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, and Tales of the Unanticipated.

Of her writing process, Naomi says, “The kids are my day job; I write mostly at night and on weekends. Writing takes too much concentration to do it when I’m simultaneously trying to listen for sudden escalations in the squabbling or long, suspicious silences.”

Naomi recently completed an urban fantasy novel set in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis (involving a Wiccan woman who unexpectedly inherits the Ark of the Covenant from her great-uncle), and is currently working on a children’s SF novel.

We are happy to welcome Naomi to MarsCon 2008! Visit her website at www.naomikritzer.com.

• Bill Blair - Actor GoH
• C. Robert Cargill - Fan GoH
• Hot Waffles - Music GoH
• Jeff Easley - Artist GoH
• Naomi Kritzer - Author GoH

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MarsCon 2008 / Feb 29th—Mar 2nd / Holiday Inn Select / Bloomington,MN
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This page was last revised December 18, 2007 at 11:16