SharedWorlds

Authors, Instructors, and Directors

Jeff Vandermeer

Personal web: http://www.jeffvandermeer.com
Amazon blog: http://www.omnivoracious.com/jeff.html
Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Vandermeer

Widely regarded as one of the world’s best fantasists, Jeff VanderMeer grew up in the Fiji Islands and spent six months traveling through Asia, Africa, and Europe before returning to the United States. These travels have deeply influenced his fiction. 

Jeff is the recipient of an NEA-funded Florida Individual Artist Fellowship for excellence in fiction and a Florida Artist Enhancement Grant. VanderMeer’s book-length fiction has been translated into 15 languages, while his short fiction has appeared in several "year’s best" anthologies and short-listed for Best American Short Stories. 

A two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award, VanderMeer has also been a finalist for the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. 

His most recent books have made the "year’s best" lists of Publishers Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Weekly, Publishers’ News, and Amazon.com. In addition to his writing, VanderMeer has edited or co-edited several anthologies, including the critically acclaimed Leviathan fiction anthology series, Best American Fantasy, and The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases. He also writes for The Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, SF Weekly, The SF Site, Locus Online, and many others.

Thirty-nine years old, he lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, Ann, and three cats.

 

Christine Dinkins

Christine Sorrell Dinkins is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wofford College. She earned a PhD in Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and is a specialist in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Her other philosophical and pedagogical interests include Heidegger and Gadamer, Philosophy of Nursing, Socratic interviewing techniques in qualitative research, Socratic pedagogy, and exploration of new uses for technology in the classroom. She served several summers as Philosopher-in-Residence of the Institute for Interpretive Phenomenology at University of Wisconsin-Madison and George Mason University. She co-edited the book Listening to the Whispers: Re-Thinking Ethics in Healthcare and is currently working on a book with Steven Zides linking philosophical issues and apocalyptic science. She prefers a highly interactive teaching style and is the recipient of multiple teaching awards and honors.

Dr. Dinkins is a lifelong reader of fantasy and science fiction literature, counting among her favorites Madeline L’Engle, Guy Gavriel Kay and Ursula K. LeGuin. She spends part of most weekends playing games from Wii to board games to fantasy and superhero RPGs. Her favorite gaming world is D&D’s Eberron, in which she is currently serving as Game Master for four high-level characters. Her other creative outlets are composing music and watercolor painting.

 

Steven Zides

Steven Zides is a physics professor at Wofford College.  He received a dual master’s degree, from the University of Tennessee, in Physics and Mathematics.  For the past nine years, he has been teaching liberal arts physics using short science fiction video clips to illustrate core physics concepts.  In addition, for the past six years he has been involved in Wofford’s Interdisciplinary Learning Community Project.  The goal of this project has been the intentional blending of introductory science and humanities courses, in the hope of making both courses more meaningful.

Mr. Zides has been involved in the planning of Shared Worlds since the beginning.  He will lead a world design group and will also teach the following classes: Pull Yourself Together: Newtonian Gravitation and Planetology; Dancing with the Stars: Stellar Evolution and the Conservation of Energy; Getting There is Half the Battle: Interplanetary and Interstellar Travel; and, All Creatures, Great and Small: General Relativity and Quantum Theory.