Jeff VanderMeer is the 2016-2017 Trias Writer-in-Residence for Hobart-William Smith College. His most recent fiction is the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), which won the Shirley Jackson Award and Nebula Award. The trilogy made over 30 year’s best lists, including Entertainment Weekly’s top 10, and prompted the New Yorker to call the author “the weird Thoreau.” The trilogy has been acquired by publishers in 28 other countries, with Paramount Pictures acquiring the movie rights. VanderMeer’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic.com, and the Los Angeles Times. He has taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference and the Miami International Book Fair, lectured at MIT, Brown, and the Library of Congress. His forthcoming novel from Farrar, Straus and Giroux is titled Borne. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, the noted editor Ann VanderMeer.
A three-time World Fantasy Award winner and 15-time nominee, VanderMeer serves as the co-director of Shared Worlds, a unique teen SF/fantasy writing camp located at Wofford College and now entering its tenth year. Previous novels include the Ambergris Cycle, with nonfiction titles including Wonderbook, Booklife, and The Steampunk Bible. 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. He is the recipient of an NEA-funded Florida Individual Artist Fellowship for excellence in fiction and a Florida Artist Enhancement Grant.
Sponsored by the Creative Writing Program, the English Department, ISLA, the Minor in Sustainability, and the William P. and Hazel B. White Foundation
The reading is free and open to the public.