Mike Allen has committed several acts of collaboration with Ian Watson, one of which resulted in an unspeakable poetic musing on Cthulhu's reproductive kinks (a recent reading of which caused a 20-year-old female listener to hyperventilate; when she recovered she declared the poem to be the greatest work of transcontinental literature ever written). In all, Mike and Ian have co-written seven poems and one very odd novelette, "Dee-Dee and the Dumpy Dancers," which appeared in Interzone in 2005. The duo also once owned eerily similar portly, black cats, both of which have departed this mortal coil. On his own, Mike has poems appearing in Nebula Awards Showcase 2008 and Nebula Awards Showcase 2009; fiction appearing in Weird Tales; and a new anthology, Clockwork Phoenix, and a new poetry collection, The Journey to Kailash, coming out real soon from Norilana Books. Ian Watson denies that his black cat was portly; she was svelte. Naturally, as an adolescent, he wrote doom-laden poems about orchids. Subsequently, some characters in his novels were poets, so Ian was obliged to write poems for them, but only in the past decade did quite a lot of poetry pour from him, causing a volume, The Lexicographer’s Love Song, from DNA Publications in 2001, edited by Mike and Anita Allen, and a Rhysling award for “True Love” in 2002. No stranger to collaboration, Ian authored the first transatlantic SF novel collaboration with Michael Bishop, Under Heaven’s Bridge (1980), the hilariously surreal The Beloved of My Beloved with Roberto Quaglia (seemingly too shocking to publish as a complete volume), and he’s currently working with Andy West of the Northampton SF Writers Group, which Ian founded, on a civilisation-shattering novel set in medieval Iran and Ethiopia and near future America. Oh, and he collaborated with Stanley Kubrick too on the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Knowing Mike Allen enabled Ian to co-write the aforementioned “Dee-Dee and the Dumpy Dancers” in the American language. Meanwhile, Ian and his Spanish translator Luisa and his Hungarian publisher Peter maintain a web-site of startling interest (www.ajeno.wired.hu) to honour the as-yet almost unknown Colombian poet Miguel Ajeno. Photo by Jessica Watson. |
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Bruce Boston is the author or more than forty books and chapbooks. His novel The Guardener's Tale (Sam's Dot, 2007) is a Bram Stoker Award Finalist and a Prometheus Award Nominee. A Spanish edition of The Guardener's Tale is forthcoming from Factoria de Ideas in 2009. Bruce lives in Ocala, Florida, with his wife, writer-artist, Marge Simon. For more information, you can visit his web site at http://hometown.aol.com/bruboston. Photo by Kim Mazzilli. |
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A.M. Dellamonica is a fantasy writer from Vancouver, Canada whose stories have appeared a host of magazines and anthologies. Her first novel, Indigo Springs, will be in bookstores in 2009; in 2006 she was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts Grant for her current work in progress, The Wintergirls. Dellamonica's web site is at www.alyxdellamonica.com. She teaches writing through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program (www.uclaextension.edu). Photo by Kelly Robson. |
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Clifford W. Dunbar published a tedious pedagogical article in TESOL Journal (back when he was a tedious pedagogical Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages) and has published poetry and short stories in several small presses. He has worked as a catering truck driver, drive-in theatre projectionist, bank teller, sleep lab assistant, small animal lab assistant, substitute teacher, medical school examinee, community college faculty, PC technician, help desk supervisor, server administrator, and team leader for an international group of hotshot server engineers. He has degrees in Speech, Linguistics, and Computers, plus multiple technical certifications. He lives in Miami, Florida. Photo by Orquidea Dunbar. |
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Sara Genge is a doctor in Madrid, Spain. She writes speculative fiction aided and abetted by a coven of friends and female relatives. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Cosmos Magazine, Apex Digest and others, including translations into Greek and Czech. This is her second story in Helix. She is a founding member and regular contributor at www.dailycabal.com, a blog of speculative microfiction. You can contact her through artemisin.blogspot.com. Photo by Leyre Goikolea. |
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Robert T. Jeschonek has written Mad Scientist Meets Cannibal, a new collection of science fiction and fantasy stories due this year from PS Publishing. His stories will also appear in Future Americas and Crime Spells from DAW. Robert's work has been featured in Postscripts, Darker Matter, and Star Trek Magazine, among others. He has also written Star Trek fiction, including the e-book Starfleet Corps of Engineers: The Cleanup and stories in New Frontier: No Limits and Strange New Worlds. His story, "Our Million-Year Mission," won the grand prize in Strange New Worlds VI. Visit him online at www.robertjeschonek.com. Photo by R. Jeschonek. |
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Ann Leckie is a graduate of Clarion West. Her fiction has appeared in Subterranean Magazine, Son and Foe, and TQR Stories. She has worked as a waitress, a receptionist, a rodman on a land-surveying crew, and a recording engineer. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri with her husband, children, and cats. Photo by Aidan Leckie-Harre. |
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Edward Morris is a 2005 British Science Fiction Association Award nominee whose short fiction has appeared worldwide in publications such as Interzone, Murky Depths, Nowa Fantastyka and Heliotrope. Most recently, he is testing the waters of the ebook market with several different publishers, negotiating with an agent, working private security and occasionally sleeping. Photo by Serena Blossom Appel. |
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Due to a lack of job possibilities as well a thick-headed persistence, Robert Reed has written and sold more than a gross of SF stories. He has been nominated for several Hugos, one Nebula and one World Fantasy Award. HIs most recent book is a novella from PS Publishing, The Flavors of My Genius. He lives and works in Lincoln, Nebraska, with his wife, Leslie, and their opinionated five year-old, Jessie. Photo by Leslie Reed. |
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Marge Ballif Simon freelances as a writer-poet-illustrator for genre and mainstream publications such as From the Asylum, The Pedestal Magazine, Strange Horizons, and others. She had three collections come out in 2007, and her self-illustrated poetry collection, Artist of Antithesis, was nominated for a Bram Stoker award in 2004. Marge is former president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and now serves as editor of Star*Line. Photo by Michael Ambrose. |
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Rachel Swirsky is a fiction MFA student at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her poetry has appeared in markets including Ideomancer, Abss & Apex, Mothering Magazine, and Lone Star Stories, and was recently nominated for a Rhysling. You can learn more about her work at http://www.rachelswirsky.com. "The Passionate Oven" is one in a series of poems that Rachel is writing about domestic magic. The first poem in this series, "Inside Her Heart," can be found at Ideomancer. Photo by Lyle Merithew. |
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George S. Walker is an engineer who lives just outside Portland, Oregon with his wife Barbara and several cats. He bicycles to work, when not lobbying for an Einstein-Rosen bridge to shorten his commute. His short stories have been published in Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Age and other magazines. Some of his fiction can be found on his website at http://george.s.walker.googlepages.com. Photo by Barbara D. Walker. |
