Author Guest of Honor Emma Bull
Emma Bull used the city of Minneapolis and its music as the setting for her first novel, War for the Oaks, and with it helped create the current contemporary urban fantasy genre. The book won the Locus Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Her third novel, Bone Dance, was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and won a Philip K. Dick Award second prize. She has sold seven novels and many shorter works, co-created and edited the fantasy shared-world anthology Liavek, and garnered several more award nominations. She is the Executive Producer of Shadow Unit, which she describes as fan fiction for a TV show that never existed. (www.shadowunit.org) Five “seasons” of stories are available for free online, as well as a variety of extra material and deleted scenes.
Her most recent novel, Territory, was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. She’s finished a draft of the sequel to Territory, titled Claim.
Emma has been an adjunct professor in Hamline University’s Creative Writing Programs. She has taught at Clarion West Writer’s Workshop, and presented classes and workshops at schools and literary events in Tucson, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Boston, and around Minnesota.
She’s also a musician. The Flash Girls, her goth-folk duo with Lorraine Garland, released three albums and won a Minnesota Music Award. Along with Steven Brust, Adam Stemple, and singer-songwriter Lojo Russo, she was a member of Cats Laughing, known in comics circles as Kitty Pryde’s favorite band.
Hobbies include sewing modern and historical clothes, knitting, gardening, and baking. She’s researching vintage cars and high school in the 1970s.
Author Guest of Honor Steven Brust
Steven is an American fantasy and science fiction author of Hungarian descent. He is best known for his series of novels about the assassin Vlad Taltos, one of a disdained minority group of humans living on a world called Dragaera. His recent novels also include The Incrementalists (2013) and its sequel The Skill of Our Hands (2017), with co-author Skyler White.
As a drummer and singer-songwriter, Brust has recorded one solo album and two albums as a member of Cats Laughing. Brust also co-wrote songs on two albums recorded in the mid-1990s by the band Boiled in Lead.
Brust’s short story “When The Bow Breaks” was nominated for the 1998 Nebula Award.
Five Hundred Years After was nominated for the 1995 Locus Poll Award (Best Fantasy Novel). Other novels nominated for various Locus Poll Awards were Brokedown Palace, The Gypsy, Agyar, and Freedom & Necessity.
Dragon was a finalist for the 1999 Minnesota Book Awards in the Fantasy & Science Fiction category. Freedom and Necessity was a 1998 finalist for the same category, while The Phoenix Guards was a finalist in 1992.
Brust discovered in August 2006 that he had made the New York Times extended bestseller list at number 30 with Dzur. He mentioned his ambivalence on this subject online. SciFi Wire posted an interview with Brust after Dzur came out.