Reading Science Fiction with Samuel Delany, Bill Wood, and Michael Swanwick

Reading Science Fiction with Samuel Delany, Bill Wood, and Michael Swanwick

Join us for a science fiction reading and discussion with authors Samuel Delany, Bill Wood, and Michael Swanwick.

Samuel R. Delany taught in the Temple English department for many years. His science fiction and fantasy tales are available in Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories. His has two experimental fiction collections, Atlantis: Three Tales and Phallos, while his novels include science fiction such as the Nebula-Award winning Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection, Nova (now in a Library of America anthology), Dhalgren, and Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. His 2007 novel Dark Reflections won the Stonewall Book Award. Delany was the subject of a 2007 documentary, The Polymath, by Fred Barney Taylor, and he has written a popular creative writing textbook, About Writing. He is the author of the widely taught Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, and his book-length autobiographical essay, The Motion of Light in Water, won a Hugo Award in 1989.

Bill Wood graduated from the University of Maine’s Honors College in 2011 with a BA in English and Philosophy. In 2013, he also received his MA in English with a creative writing focus there. Wanting to pursue creative writing further, particularly within the realm of science fiction and fantasy, Bill was accepted to Temple University’s MFA program in 2014, where he met—and sadly only had one class with—Samuel Delany, now his boss and good friend. Bill is currently working on a science fiction series, A Little Bit of Chaos, part of which can be found on Amazon.

Michael Swanwick has received a Hugo Award for fiction in an unprecedented five out of six consecutive years and has been honored with the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. He has the pleasant distinction of losing more of those awards than any other writer in the history of the field. He has written ten novels, over 150 stories, and countless works of flash fiction. Last summer, Tor Books published The Iron Dragon’s Mother which completes a trilogy of stand-alone fantasies begun twenty-five years earlier with The Iron Dragon’s Daughter. Next summer will see the publication of The City Under the Stars, co-written with Gardner Dozois and finished shortly after his old friend’s death. Swanwick’s share of the novel is dedicated to him. Swanwick lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter.

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