Adams, Harriet
Harriet Stratemeyer Adams was born on December 12, 1892, and died on March 27, 1982. She was a juvenile book packager, children's novelist, and publisher who was responsible for some 200 books over her literary career. She wrote the plot outlines for many books in the Nancy Drew series, using characters invented by her father, Edward Stratemeyer. Adams also oversaw other ghostwriters who wrote for these and many other series as a part of the Stratemeyer Syndicate and rewrote many of the novels to update them starting in the late 1950s.
She was better known under a variety of pen names: Victor Appleton II, May Hollis Barton, Franklin W. Dixon, Laura Lee Hope, Carolyn Keene, Ann Sheldon, Helen Louise Thorndyke.
She is the author of the perennially popular Nancy Drew mysteries for young girls and the equally popular Hardy Boys and Tom Swift, Jr., series for young boys, she also wrote numerous volumes in the Bobbsey Twins, Honey Bunch, and Dana Girls series. All of these, along with the famous Rover boys, were originated by her father who founded the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1901. A "writing factory" located in Maplewood, New Jersey, it still turns out the most successful series books ever written for American youngsters roughly eight to 14 years of age. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series alone sell 16,000,000 copies a year.
When he died in 1930, Stratemeyer left to his daughters, Harriet and Edna, the job of keeping up the 17 sets of series then in print. Edna remained in the business for 12 years; Harriet remained a senior partner well into her 80s, working with three junior partners to update earlier titles to create new volumes. Adams herself wrote nearly 200 volumes, including most of the titles in the Nancy Drew series, along with rewrites of the first three originated by her father: the young sleuth's blue roadster with running boards had to be replaced, as well as outdated hair styles and various dialects which the modern reader would find offensive.
Characters produced by the Stratemeyer Factory are either good or bad because, Adams maintained, mixed characters don't interest children. Plots are spun according to a strict formula guaranteed to satisfy adolescent fantasy: action and suspense packed into 20 cliffhanging chapters. Only eighteen years of age, Nancy Drew is omniscient and omnipotent, solving mysteries that baffle adults, professional detectives, and the well-intentioned police who, however hard they try, are never as quick-thinking and fast-acting as Nancy.
A 1914 graduate of Wellesley College, an English major with deep interests in religion, music, science, and archeology (her favorite Nancy Drew, The Clue in the Crossword Cipher, is based on "astounding" archeological discoveries and deductions among the Inca ruins), Adams was an active alumna and a 1978 winner of the Alumnae Achievement Award. Wellesley's motto, "Non Ministrari Sed Ministrare" (not to be ministered unto but to minister), had been Adams's own guiding principle and the lesson she hoped to teach young readers who gathered in schools and libraries all over the country to hear her speak. "Don't be a gimme, gimme kind of person," she told them in an amusingly loose translation of the Latin, "Do something yourself to help other people."
Adams traveled widely: South America, Hawaii, Africa, the Orient), using the foreign settings to provide "authentic backgrounds" for her stories, especially for the Nancy Drews. Indeed, Nancy—whom she regarded as "a third lovely daughter" (in addition to her two real-life daughters)—was rarely out of Adams' thoughts when she took a trip.
Adams' books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and, although considered nonliterary, are now staples in most children's libraries. In late 1977 the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series were adapted for television (Nancy Drew films had been made in the 1930s), although Adams did not write the scripts. She did, however, require the television programs to observe the same high standards as the books: no profanity, no sex (as a concession to the new morality, however, Nancy's boyfriend Ned is now allowed to give her a quick goodbye hug and kiss), no extreme violence (a villain's moderately heavy blow on the head which temporarily renders Nancy unconscious is not considered "extreme"), no racism, and no "religious confrontations."
Adams received public recognition in the late 1970s such as the 1978 Certificate of Appreciation from the New Jersey Congress of Parents and Teachers and, in the same year, honorary doctorate degrees from Kean and Upsala Colleges in New Jersey. To encourage more serious study and writing of children's books, Adams endowed a chair at Wellesley to be known as the Harriet Stratemeyer Adams Professor in Juvenile Literature. Continuing to work nearly to the end of her life, Adams died in 1981.
Other Works:
As Victor Appleton II, The Tom Swift, Jr., Series (21 titles, 1935-1972). Including: Tom Swift and His Planet Stone (1935), Tom Swift and His Giant Robot (1954), Tom Swift and the Spectromarine Selector (1960), Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X (1972).
As May Hollis Barton, The Barton Books for Girls Series (15 titles, 1931-1950). Including: Sallie's Test of Skill (1931), Virginia's Ventures (1932).
As Franklin W. Dixon, The Hardy Boys Series (20 titles, 1934-1973). Including: The Mark on the Door (1934), The Clue in the Embers (1955), The Mystery of the Aztec Warrior (1964), The Mystery at Devil's Paw (1973).
As Laura Lee Hope, The Bobbsey Twins Series (15 titles, 1940-1967). Including: The Bobbsey Twins in the Land of Cotton (1940). The Bobbsey Twins on a Bicycle Trip (1955). The Bobbsey Twins and the Cedar Camp Mystery (1967).
As Carolyn Keene, The Dana Girls Series (32 titles, 1934-1978). Including: By the Light of the Study Lamp (1934), Secret of the Swiss Chalet (1958), The Phantom Surfer (1968), The Curious Coronation (1976), Mountain Peak Mystery (1978). The Nancy Drew Mystery Series (56 titles, 1930-1978). Including: Secret of the Old Clock (1930), The Hidden Staircase (1959), The Mystery of the Fire Dragon (1961), The Mysterious Mannequin (1970), The Nancy Drew Cookbook: Clues to Good Cooking (1973), The Mystery of Crocodile Island (1978).
As Ann Sheldon, The Linda Craig Series (4 titles, 1960-1966). Including: Linda Craig and the Mystery in Mexico (1964).
https://lccn.loc.gov/n83169423
Anthony, Patricia
Patricia Marie Anthony (March 29, 1947 – July 2, 2013) was an American science fiction and slipstream author. She was a visiting professor of English literature at the University of Lisbon, Lisbon, associate professor of English at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil, and adjunct professor of creative writing at the Southern Methodist University, Brazil. Anthony published her first science fiction novel in 1992 with Cold Allies, about the arrival of extraterrestrials in the midst of a 21st-century Third World War.
This was followed by Brother Termite, Conscience of the Beagle, The Happy Policeman, Cradle of Splendor, and God's Fires, each of which combined science fiction plots with other genres in unconventional ways. Several of her short-fiction works were republished in the 1998 collection Eating Memories.
Anthony's best-known and most critically acclaimed work is probably 1993's Brother Termite, a tale of political intrigue told from the perspective of the leader of extraterrestrials who have occupied the United States. James Cameron acquired the movie rights to Brother Termite and John Sayles wrote a script, but the movie has not been produced.
Following her initial success, Anthony taught creative writing at Southern Methodist University for three years, and as her career progressed she moved farther away from the traditional boundaries of the science fiction genre. Her 1998 novel Flanders—the highly metaphysical story of an American sharpshooter in the British Army during World War I—represented a clean break with her science fiction past and her final outing with Ace Books. It was a critical, if not commercial, success.
After the publication of Flanders, Anthony ceased writing science fiction to work as a screenwriter, though none of her scripts have been green-lighted. Anthony completed a new novel in 2006, but it remains unpublished.
Anthony lived in Brazil during the 1970s and later drew upon that experience for Cradle of Splendor.
Bibliography
Cold Allies (1992), Brother Termite (1993), Conscience of the Beagle (1993), Happy Policeman (1994), Cradle of Splendor (1996), God's Fires (1997), Flanders (1998), Eating Memories (1998).
https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/anthony_patricia
Arnason, Eleanor
Eleanor Atwood Arnason (born December 28, 1942) is a author of science fiction novels and short stories. She is the daughter of H. Harvard Arnason, a Canadian-born man of Icelandic descent, who worked as an art historian and became the director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1951, and Elizabeth Hickcox Yard Arnason, a social worker by profession who spent her childhood in a missionary community in western China. Arnason is the niece of the American feminist Molly Yard and her maternal grandparents were both Methodist missionaries. This Methodist influence would be visible in her works, most notably in Ring of Swords.
From 1949 to 1960, Arnason and her parents lived in Walker's "Idea House #2", a futuristic dwelling built next to the Walker Art Center. Arnason has said that her experience growing up around avant-garde artists in a futurist house, in addition to the influence of her feminist, socialist mother contributed to her preoccupation with the future, and consequently science fiction. Prior to 1949, Arnason's family moved frequently: from New York City to Chicago; Washington, D.C.; London; Paris; and St. Paul, Minnesota.
She graduated from Swarthmore College in 1964, with a B.A. in art history, and continued her education in graduate school at the University of Minnesota, until 1967. She spent the next seven years working as an office clerk in Brooklyn and then Detroit. Her time in these blue-collar, racially diverse areas helped to shape her understanding about class consciousness, conflict, and revolution—notions that are reflected in her works. Arnason moved back to Minneapolis–Saint Paul in 1974 and continued to work in offices, warehouses, a large art museum, and more recently, a series of small nonprofits devoted to history, peace, justice, and art.
Arnason's earliest published story, "A Clear Day in the Motor City", appeared in New Worlds in 1973. Her work often depicts cultural change and conflict, usually from the viewpoint of characters who cannot or will not live by their own societies' rules. This anthropological focus has led many to compare her fiction to that of Ursula K. Le Guin.
Arnason won the inaugural James Tiptree Jr. Award in 1991 and the 1992 Mythopoeic Award for A Woman of the Iron People and in 2000 won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Fiction for "Dapple" and the HOMer Award for her novelette Stellar Harvest. Stellar Harvest was also nominated for a Hugo Award in 2000. In 2003, she was nominated for two Nebula Awards for her novella Potter of Bones and her short story "Knapsack Poems". In 2004, she was guest of honor at Wiscon. She lives in Minnesota.
Since 1994, she has shifted her literary focus from novels to short fiction. She retired in 2009 and now writes full-time.
The issues that transpire most in Arnason's life and writings encompass feminism, peace, social justice, support for the union movement and a deep belief that racism and all forms of prejudice should be opposed. City Pages labelled Arnason as a political radical.
Having come of age during Second-wave feminism, Arnason included gender and sexuality as central themes in her work, notably in her collection of Hwarhath stories, in which she "wanted to create a society in which homosexual love was normal and heterosexual love was abnormal, sort of as a thought experiment. And because contemporary Americans have very rigid ideas of what is normal." The Hwarhath stories also addressed issues of gender roles and reproductive rights.
She was profoundly affected by the McCarthy period, particularly because of the ways that children were taught to securitize against nuclear annihilation. She became involved in the Student Peace Union and attended demonstrations during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ring of Swords, Arnason's Hwarhath novel, illustrates peacebuilding after a long war; an endeavor both representative of Arnason's peace beliefs and of the make love, not war politics of the 1960s.
In 1963, Arnason went to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with her mother. This had a profound impact that would be reflected in her story "Big Brown Mama and Brer Rabbit" in which Brer Rabbit transforms into an African-American man in the early 20th century. Arnason has often opted for racially diverse characters, including, but not limited to, a heroine of Chinese descent in A Woman of the Iron People and a Hispanic heroine in Ring of Swords. In addition, her Lydia Duluth stories present a future in which an overwhelming majority of humans have dark brown and black toned skins as the best protection against the radiation of many stars.
Arnason had intermittent activist politics outside of her work as an author, working in a campaign office in New York, collecting and transporting supplies for striking coal miners in Kentucky, becoming a local and national official in the National Writers Union and engaging in Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party precinct politics.
Published works
Standalone novels: 1978 - The Sword Smith, 1986 - To the Resurrection Station, 1987 - Daughter of the Bear King, 1991 - A Woman of the Iron People, 1992 - Woman of the Iron People #1: In the Light of Sigma Draconis, 1992 - Woman of the Iron People #2: Changing Women.
Collections: 2005 - Ordinary People, 2010 - Mammoths of the Great Plains, 2013 - Big Mama Stories, 2014 - Hidden Folk.
Short stories: "A Clear Day in the Motor City" (1973), "The Warlord of Saturn's Moons" (1974), "Ace 167" (1974), "The House by the Sea" (1975), "The Face on the Barroom Floor" (1976 with Ruth Berman), "Going Down" (1977), "A Ceremony of Discontent" (1981), "The Ivory Comb" (1982), "Glam's Story" (1987), "Among the Featherless Bipeds" (1988), "A Brief History of the Order of St. Cyprian the Athlete" (1992), "The Dog's Story" (1996), "The Venetian Method" (1998), "Feeding the Mother: A Hwarhath Religious Anecdote" (1998), "The Grammarian's Five Daughters" (1999), available online, "Origin Story" (2000), "Moby Quilt" (2001), "The Lost Mother: A Story Told by the Divers" (2002), "Knapsack Poems" (2002), "The Potter of Bones" (2002), "Big Black mama and Tentacle Man" (2003), "Big Ugly Mama and the Zk" (2003), "Big Green Mama Falls in Love" (2006) in Eidolon I (ed. Jonathan Strahan, Jeremy G. Byrne), "The Diner" (2008), "Patrick and Mr. Bear: A True Story" (2010), "Mammoths of the Great Plains" (2010), "My Husband Steinn" (2011), "The Woman Who Fooled Death Five Times" (2012), "Big Red Mama in Time and Morris, Minnesota" (2013), "Big Brown Mama and Brer Rabbit" (2013), "Kormak the Lucky" (2013), "Ruins" (2015) in Old Venus (anthology).
Hwarhath stories: 1993 - Ring of Swords, "The Hound of Merin" (1993), "The Semen Thief" (1994), "The Lovers" (1994), "The Small Black Box of Morality" (1996), "The Gauze Banner" (1998), "Dapple: A Hwarhath Historical Romance" (1999), "The Actors" (1999), "The Garden: A Hwarhath Science Fictional Romance" (2004), "Holmes Sherlock: A Hwarhath Mystery" (2012).
Lydia Duluth stories: "Stellar Harvest" (1999), "The Cloud Man" (2000), "Lifeline" (2001), Tomb of the Fathers (2010), "Tunnels" (2020), "Knapsack Poems" (????).
"Knapsack Poems" was reprinted in the June 2014 issue of the "Lightspeed Magazine".
Poems: "Poem untitled" (1976), "The Land of Ordinary People" (1985), "On the Border" (1986), "On Writing" (1986), "There Was an Old Lady ..." (1987), "Clean House Poem" (1988), "Mars Poem" (1988), "Poem Written After I Read an Article Which Argued That Birds Are Descended From Dinosaurs" (1988), "Dragon Poem" (1989), "Amnita and the Giant Stinginess" (1990), "The Glutton: A Goxhat Accounting Chant" (2001), "Song from the Kalevala" (2003), "Colline's Coat" (2003), "On Seeing Bellini's Opera The Capulets and Montagues..." (2003).
Anthologies as editor: Arnason, Eleanor; Garey, Terry A., eds. (1988). Time Gum and Other Poems from the Minicon Poetry Readings. Rune Press.
https://eleanorarnason.com/
Asimov, Janet Opal
Janet Opal Asimov (née Jeppson; August 6, 1926 – February 25, 2019), usually writing as J. O. Jeppson, was an American science fiction writer, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst.
She started writing children's science fiction in the 1970s. She was married to Isaac Asimov from 1973 until his death in 1992, and they collaborated on a number of science fiction books aimed at young readers, including the Norby series. She died in February 2019 at the age of 92.
Jeppson earned a B.A. degree from Stanford University (first attending Wellesley College), her M.D. degree from New York University Medical School, completing a residency in psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital. In 1960, she graduated from the William Alanson White Institute of Psychoanalysis, where she continued to work until 1986. After her marriage to Isaac Asimov, she continued to practice psychiatry and psychoanalysis under the name Janet O. Jeppson, and she published medical papers under that name.
Janet Asimov's first published writing was a "mystery short" sold to Hans Stefan Santesson for The Saint Mystery Magazine, which appeared in the May 1966 issue. Her first novel was The Second Experiment in 1974; Asimov wrote mostly science fiction novels for children throughout her career. As a psychiatrist she incorporated aspects of psychoanalysis, human identity, and other psychiatry-related ideas in her writing. According to Isaac Asimov, the books that Janet Asimov wrote in association with him were 90 percent Janet's, and his name was wanted on the books by the publisher "for the betterment of sales". After Isaac's death, she took on the writing of his syndicated popular-science column in the Los Angeles Times.
Janet Jeppson began dating Isaac Asimov in 1970 immediately following his separation from Gertrude Blugerman. They were married on November 30, 1973, two weeks after Asimov's divorce from Gertrude. Despite Jeppson's upbringing in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, their marriage was officiated by a leader of Ethical Culture, a humanist religious group that Janet later joined. On the same day, she learned that her first novel, The Second Experiment, would be published (under her maiden name).
The Second Experiment (1974) (as J. O. Jeppson), The Last Immortal (1980) (a sequel to The Second Experiment) (as J. O. Jeppson), Mind Transfer (1988), The Package in Hyperspace (1988), Murder at the Galactic Writers' Society (1994), The House Where Isadora Danced (2009) (as J. O. Jeppson), Norby Chronicles (with Isaac Asimov), Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot (1983), Norby's Other Secret (1984), Norby and the Lost Princess (1985), Norby and the Invaders (1985), Norby and the Queen's Necklace (1986), Norby Finds a Villain (1987), Norby Down to Earth (1988), Norby and Yobo's Great Adventure (1989).
.jpg)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Asire
Auel, Jean M.
Jean Marie Auel was born on February 18, 1936, in Chicago. She wrote the Earth's Children books, a series of novels set in prehistoric Europe that explores human activities during this time, and touches on the interactions of Cro-Magnon people with Neanderthals. Her books have sold more than 45 million copies worldwide.
She is of Finnish descent, the second of five children of Neil Solomon Untinen, a house painter, and Martha (née Wirtanen) Untinen. Auel attended the University of Portland. While a student, she joined Mensa and worked at Tektronix as a clerk (1965–1966), a circuit-board designer (1966–1973), a technical writer (1973–1974), and a credit manager (1974–1976). She earned an MBA from the University of Portland in 1976. She received honorary degrees from her alma mater, Pacific University, Portland Water District and State University, the University of Maine, and the Mount Vernon College for Women.
Jean Marie Untinen married Ray Bernard Auel after high school. They have five children and live in Portland, Oregon in the Goose Hollow neighborhood.
In 1977, Auel began extensive library research of the Ice Age for her first book. She joined a survival class to learn how to construct an ice cave and learned primitive methods of making fire, tanning leather, and shaping stone from the aboriginal skills expert Jim Riggs.
The Clan of the Cave Bear was nominated for numerous literary awards, including an American Booksellers Association nomination for the best first novel. It was also later adapted into a screenplay for the film of the same name.
After the sales success of her first book, Auel was able to travel to the sites of prehistoric ruins and relics, and also meet many of the experts with whom she had been corresponding. Her research has taken her across Europe from France to Ukraine, including most of what Marija Gimbutas called Old Europe. In 1986, she attended and co-sponsored a conference on modern human origins at the School of American Research, Santa Fe. She has developed a close friendship with Doctor Jean Clottes of France, who was responsible for the exploration of the Cosquer Cave discovered in 1985, and the Chauvet Cave discovered in 1994.
In October 2008, Auel was named an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture and Communication.
By 1990, Auel's first three books in her Earth's Children series had sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and been translated into 18 languages; Crown Publishers paid Auel about $25 million for the rights to publish The Plains of Passage and the two subsequent volumes. By May 2002, on the cusp of the publication of the fifth book, the series had sold 34 million books. The sixth and final book in the series, The Land of Painted Caves, was published in 2011.
Series: The Clan of the Cave Bear, 1980, The Valley of Horses, 1982, The Mammoth Hunters, 1985, The Plains of Passage, 1990, The Shelters of Stone, 2002, The Land of Painted Caves, 2011.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Auel
No comments:
Post a Comment