Jeff VanderMeer

VanderMeer was born in Pennsylvania but grew up in the Fiji Islands, where his parents worked for the Peace Corps. He then spent later years in Ithaca, New York, before attending the University of Florida for three years and finishing his college education in 1992 at Clarion University. His first book was the self-published collection The Book of Frog (1989), which he wrote while he was in college. He continued to publish short story collections through the 1990s, publishing his first novel, Dradin, In Love, in 1996. One of his first early successes was his 2001 short-story collection City of Saints and Madmen. He then married his wife Ann, a publisher and editor, in 2002. VanderMeer gained widespread success in 2014 by publishing the Southern Reach Trilogy in quick succession: Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance. Annihilation won the Nebula Award, recognizing the year’s best work of science fiction or fantasy published in the United States. More recently, VanderMeer has published Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts. He has also collaborated with Ann on numerous anthologies of science fiction and weird fiction. VanderMeer currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida.