Jeff VanderMeer

Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" VanderMeer (born July 7, 1968) is an American New York Times Best Selling writer, editor, teacher, and publisher. He has won the Nebula Award, Rhysling Award, British Fantasy Award, BSFA Award, the World Fantasy Award three times, 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

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.

VanderMeer has also worked in other media, such as 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. VanderMeer also wrote a Predator tie-in novel for Dark Horse Comics called Predator: South China Seas and the introduction to Ben Templesmith's second Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse graphic novel from IDW Publishing. VanderMeer also worked on 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 has also worked on a number of anthologies. Most of these have been collaborations with his wife, Ann VanderMeer, who was a Hugo-award-winning editor of Weird Tales. These anthologies include The New Weird, a collection of stories from New Weird authors; Last Drink Bird Head, a charity anthology benefiting literacy; The Weird, a collection of weird fiction; Time Traveler's Almanac, an anthology of time-travel fiction; Fast Ships, Black Sails, a pirate fiction anthology; and a series of steampunk anthologies.

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 May 6, 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 one of "the most uncompromising—yet most rewarding—genre series" while authors like Stephen King praised the series calling it "creepy and fascinating".^[7][8] Both Authority and Acceptance made the New York Times Best Sellers List for Trade Paper Backs.^[9][10]

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.^[11] VanderMeer has also taught at the Clarion Workshop^[12] 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,^[13] a Locus Award, and was nominated for a Hugo and World Fantasy Award.^[14]

Awards

Jeff has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award 14 times.^[15] 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, International Horror Guild 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:

• 2000 – World Fantasy Award for the novella The Transformation of Martin Lake^[16]
• 2003 – World Fantasy Award for his anthology Leviathan 3 (with Forrest Aguirre)
• 2009 – World Fantasy Award nomination for Finch^[17]
• 2009 – Nebula Award nomination for Best Novel for Finch
• 2012 – World Fantasy Award for his anthology The Weird (with Ann VanderMeer)
• 2013 – BSFA Award for Best Non-Fiction for Wonderbook^[18]
• 2013 – Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction for Wonderbook
• 2013 – Hugo Award nomination for Wonderbook
• 2013 – World Fantasy Award nomination for Wonderbook
• 2014 – Nebula Award winner for Best Novel for Annihilation^[19]

Bibliography

Novels

• Dradin, In Love (1996, collected in all editions of City of Saints and Madmen)
• The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris, by Duncan Shriek (1999, collected in all editions of City of Saints and Madmen)
• Veniss Underground (2003)
• Shriek: An Afterword (2006)
• Predator: South China Sea (2008)
• Finch (2009)
• Annihilation (2014)
• Authority (2014)
• Acceptance (2014)
• Borne (2016)
• The Journals of Doctor Mormeck (forthcoming)
• The Book Murderer (forthcoming)

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? (non-fiction, 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)
• Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance (2014)

Short fiction

• "Mansions of the Moon" (2001) in Nemonymous 1
• "My Report on the Secret Life of Shane Hamill" (2006) in Eidolon I (ed. Jonathan Strahan, Jeremy G. Byrne)
• "Fixing Hanover" (2008) in Extraordinary Engines and reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (2012) ed. Sean Wallace

Other projects

• The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals (with Ann VanderMeer, 2010, Tachyon Publications)

Anthologies edited

• Leviathan 1 (with Luke O'Grady, 1994)
• Leviathan 2 (with Rose Secrest, 1998)
• Leviathan 3 (with Forrest Aguirre, 2002)
• Album Zutique (2003)
• The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases (with Mark Roberts, 2003)
• The New Weird (with Ann VanderMeer, 2007)
• Best American Fantasy (with Ann VanderMeer, 2007)
• Best American Fantasy: v. 2 (with Ann VanderMeer, 2008)
• Last Drink Bird Head, (2008)
• Steampunk (with Ann VanderMeer, 2008)
• Fast Ships, Black Sails, (with Ann VanderMeer, 2009) – Fantasy pirate stories
• Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded (2010)
• The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (with Ann VanderMeer, 2011)
• The Weird (with Ann VanderMeer, 2012)
• The Time Traveler's Almanac (with Ann VanderMeer, 2014)
• Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (with Ann VanderMeer, 2015)

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Jeff VanderMeer

• Official website
• Golden Gryphon Press official site – About Secret Life
• Jeff VanderMeer at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Jeff VanderMeer at the Internet Book List