Program Participant Biographies, Continued

He joined the Washington Science Fiction Association in 1975, and was active in that club and its Disclave conventions until he was transferred to Colorado Springs in 1991. Kent is a founding member of First Friday Fandom of Colorado Springs.

Over the last 25+ years, he has worked as a gopher at many conventions, beginning with the 1975 Disclave. Kent worked on Disclaves, Balticons, Boskones, Westercons, Eastercons, Loscons, as badge checker, art show assembler, registration clerk, ops staff, and whatever else needed to be done.

Kebt chaired two small conventions, Datclave in 1980 and Smofcon 16 in 1998. He's a regular attendee and participant at SMOFcons, and am frequently on panels on convention management and organization.

Kent started working on Worldcons at Iguanacon in 1978, where he was a radio operator and operations staff member. And this year, he's chairing Denvention.

Ben Jeapes

Ben Jeapes was overexposed in early childhood to Dr Who, Thunderbirds and Star Trek, which set him on the science fiction trail. He started writing science fiction himself at the age of 18 in the mistaken belief that it would be quite easy (it isn't). He sold his first short story in 1989 and has now had 18 of them published, mostly in Interzone. He is the author of the novels His Majesty's Starship (Scholastic, December 1998, published in the US by Scholastic Inc. under the bafflingly inappropriate title The Ark); Wingèd Chariot (Scholastic, February 2000); The Xenocide Mission (a sequel to His Majesty's Starship) (David Fickling Books, 2002) and The New World Order (David Fickling Books, 2004). Wingèd Chariot was reissued as Time's Chariot in 2008 by David Fickling Books.

In real life, Ben worked in academic publishing for 12 years until January 2000 when he became owner and proprietor of the small press Big Engine. Big Engine achieved a reasonable reputation in its nearly three years, but sadly the harsh realities of economics led to its voluntary liquidation. Ben now works as Senior Technical Editor for the JANET computer network and continues to write in his spare time, for himself and for others.

Ben's ambition is to live to be 101 and 7 months, so as to reach the 1000th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings and the arrival of the man responsible for Ben's unusual surname – a Danish mercenary called Jep, whose name features in the Domesday Book and who fought for William the Conqueror – in the British Isles. It's not everyone who gets to celebrate a thousandth family anniversary. Ben's other ambition is to have descendants of his own by the time he's 101, so they can remind him what he's staying alive for.

He is English and as quietly proud of the fact as you would expect of the descendant of a Danish mercenary who fought for a bunch of Norsemen living in northern France.
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Beverly A. Hale

Beverly was born in Texas an odd number of years ago and then taken to Oklahoma two months later. Since then she has lived in Oklahoma, Texas, California, the D.C. area and back to Oklahoma where she now lives with her husband, two dogs and 10,000+ books. Beverly has a degree in English from the University of Oklahoma and did graduate work in Composition. She has worked at a wide variety of jobs including: teacher, IRS auditor, accountant, office manager for a SF writer's corporation, various and assorted clerk and admin positions, an attendant in a home for the emotionally disturbed, a pool cleaner, personnel consultant, director of a language school, marketing director, managing director of a gaming company, copy-editor, sales, security, meeting planner... she's been working for a long, long time.

Beverly started writing in grade school, mostly because she was bored, and also because she'd already read everything in the library. Her writing attempts were not always met with applause and acclamation...far too often, she wound up standing in the corner on the dreaded "green square" (though, to be honest, a couple of the times were for talking to the little boy on the next mat over instead of taking a nap at naptime).

In her spare time, Beverly swims, cooks, bakes, paints, gardens, travels (Canada, Mexico, Europe, Bahamas, most of the U.S including Hawaii and Alaska), learns languages (so far she knows at least enough to find food, drink and a bathroom in German, French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Urdu and Hindi. She's currently trying to learn Japanese and Chinese). She likes to try new things like: snorkeling, dogsledding, milking goats, making sushi, and dancing.

And she collects things: cookbooks, dictionaries, insults in other languages, but especially family. Currently she has 75+ college students from various countries (Taiwan, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam) who call her Mom, an increasing number of nieces, nephews and godchildren as well as various brothers and sisters she has accumulated along the way.

Visit her website.
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Bill Fawcett

Bill Fawcett has been a professor, teacher, corporate executive, and college dean. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Education from Western Illinois University (1969) and a Master of Education from University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana in 1971.

His entire life has been spent in the creative fields and managing other creative individuals. He is one of the founders of Mayfair Games, a board and role play gaming company. As an author Bill has written or co-authored over a dozen books plus dozens of articles and short stories. As a book packager, a person who prepares series of books from concept to production for major publishers, his company Bill Fawcett & Associates has packaged over 300 science fiction, mystery and Action books for virtually every major publisher. He founded, and later sold, what is now the largest hobby shop in Northern Illinois.

Bill's first commercial writing appeared as articles in the Dragon Magazine and include some of the earliest appearances of classes and monster types for Dungeons and Dragons. With Mayfair Games he created, wrote, and edited many of the over 50 "Role Aides" Role Playing Game modules and supplements released by Mayfair in the 1970s and 1980s. During this period he also designed almost a dozen board games, including several Charles Roberts Award (Gaming's Emmy) winners such as Empire Builder and Sanctuary.

In 1994 Bill joined with a team of programmers to form Catware featuring him as producer and designer. Catware released Swords of Xeen (New World Computing) as part of the Trilogy game set, Star General, a strategic game based upon the six Fleet books (SSI) that was one of the 20 best selling games in the year of its release, Las Vegas Games (New World) and is now working on a On-line Role Playing Game. He produced and designed the computer RPG game Shattered Light for Simon and Schuster, and Fawcett continues to develop new internet projects.

His novel writing began with the juvenile series, Swordquest for Ace Penguin Putnam Publishing. He wrote or co-wrote four fantasy novels, beginning with the Lord of Cragsclaw. The Fleet series he created with David Drake has become a classic of military cience fiction.

Bill has collaborated on several novels including mysteries such as the Authorized Mycroft Holmes novels, the Madame Vernet Investigates series, and edited Making Contact, a UFO Contact handbook. As an anthologist Bill has edited or co-edited almost 50 anthologies.

Bill is the editor of Hunters and Shooters and The Teams, two oral histories of the SEALs in Viet nam. His most recently published work is as co-author of It Seemed Like a good Idea, Great Historical Fiascos and You Did What, both are a fun look at bad decisions in history. Published in early 2006 was How To Lose A Battle: a modern look at how bad generals lose battles and coming next year How To Lose a War and It Looked Good on Paper, Engineering disasters through history. Recently released is Oval Office Oddities, thousands of fun facts, quotes, and just plain strangeness about the US President, First Lady, and White House.

Bill lives in the Chicago area with his wife, science fiction writer Jody Lynn Nye.
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Bradford Lyau

Brad Lyau has been a life-long reader of SF, has been attending conventions for 37 years, and has been a program participant for twenty years. A former educator (several universities in California and Europe), he is now involved in the technology transfer industry and political consulting. He has published academic articles on American, British, and European SF. He earned his BA degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley and has MA and PhD in history from the University of Chicago. He also has a MBA degree (to look acceptable to corporate America) from the University of New Mexico. Presently he is working on a book about French SF after World War II. Visit his "Books to Send on a Starship" page and help him complete his SF Novel List!

His most recent article was a paper delivered at the J. Lloyd Eaton Conference last May. It dealt with how French SF during the 1950s treated the theme of Mars. (Ray Bradbury and Frederik Pohl were the honored writer guests.)

He plans to visit Denver twice this year--the first time for Denvention 3, the second for the Democratic National Convention as he is a Pledged Delegate for Senator Barack Obama for President. (Remember to vote!)
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Christian Sauvé

Christian Sauvé is a French-Canadian fan, reader and reviewer. He has contributed to the organization of Montréal's literary SF&F convention Boréal for years and is part of Anticipation's programming team. His reviews can be read in Solaris and Alibis magazines, as well as the group blog Fractale Framboise. He lives between Ottawa and his website.

Christian Sauvé est un fan, lecteur et critique canadien-français. Il contribue à l'organisation du congrès littéraire montréalais de SF&F Boréal depuis des années et fait partie de l'équipe de programmation d'Anticipation. Ses critiques paraissent dans les revues Solaris et Alibis, ainsi qu'au blogue collectif Fractale Framboise. Il vit entre Ottawa et www.christian-sauve.com
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David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1971 and grew up in Orange County, California. His wife, Victoria, is an attorney and expert in litigation support technology. They live in the Washington D.C. area where he is a web programmer for such entities as the U.S. Army, the FBI, ExxonMobil, and Rolls-Royce.

Dave attended the Johns Hopkins University's Writing Seminars program from 1989 to 1993. His first novel, Infoquake, was published in 2006. Though Barnes & Noble Explorations initially called the book "the love child of Donald Trump and Vernor Vinge," they later named it their Top SF Novel of 2006. Dave is a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer at Denvention.

Dave is well-versed in PHP, Ruby on Rails, WordPress, ColdFusion, HTML, Javascript, XML, and CSS, and is an expert in web usability, web design, search engine optimization, and writing for the web. He was one of three people interviewed to be the second member of America Online's "web team." He says, "Unfortunately, I didn't get the job, or I would be worth tens of millions of dollars right now."
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Dean Wesley Smith

Dean Wesley Smith is the bestselling author of over 90 novels and even more short stories) written under a number of varied names . Writing under the Smith name, he is best known for writing numerous media books, including over twenty Star Trek novels, two original Men in Black novels, three Spider-Man novels, and many game and comic novels. With his wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he has also done novelizations for the first X-Men movie and The Tenth Kingdom, among others. His most recent original novel under the Smith name is All Eve's Hallows, a fantasy send-up of Men in Black. He is the former editor and publisher of Pulphouse Publishing, and is currently writing thriller, western, young adult, and romance novels under his various pen names.

Formerly a professional golfer, Smith now plays semi-professional poker between books. He also collects marbles, and teaches young professional writers from time to time. He has been working in publishing full time since 1988, which is more years than he wants to think about.

He lives with Hugo Award Winning writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch and five cats in a three-building compound overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
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Charles Stross

Charles Stross was born in 1964 in Leeds, England; he currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he writes full-time. Along the way he picked up degrees in pharmacy and computer science and worked in a variety of jobs (which he sometimes describes as "a background in drug dealing and hacking"). Although he'd been writing and publishing short stories since the mid-1980s, he didn't really start writing full-time until he was caught out between jobs when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 -- at which point, ironically, his writing turned out to be a much more meteoritic career path.

Said Stross, "Aside from the writing I'm really kind of boring; just another obsessive-compulsive writer geek with a gadget fetish, two cats, and a beer belly."

Since then he's published twelve novels, five of which have been short-listed for the Hugo awards, and won the Hugo award for best novella in 2005. His last SF novel, Halting State, is short-listed for a Hugo this year. His latest novel, Saturn's Children, is out in July 2008.
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Carole Parker

Carole Parker has been working behind the stage at local, regional, WorldCon, and Costume-Con masquerades for more than twenty-five years. Almost all of these years have been spent helping masquerade contestants feel more comfortable by being a den mother, lead den mother, assisting the Masquerade Green Room Manager, and being the Green Room Manager at Nippon2007 WorldCon. Other work behind the scenes includes being part of the concom for Costume-Con 26, and a founding member of Silicon Web (SiW), an online chapter of the International Costumers' Guild (ICG). Carole has also competed as a masquerade contestant and has won workmanship awards for her dyework.
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