Underrated Writers

Carol Emshwiller

According to Gwenda Bond (Shaken & Stirred), "Carol Emswhiller has had a fascinating career as a writer, spanning several decades. Now in her eighties, she continues to break down new barriers and is producing exciting work that is unlike anything anyone else is doing. This year alone saw an amazing new story collection I Live With You and a fantastic novel for young adults Mister Boots. Read her immediately."

More about Carol Emshwiller
+  Emshewiller's official site and bibliography
+  Bookslut's interview with Emshewiller
+  Nice profile of her at LCRW
+  Gwenda ponts to the Believer review of Emshwiller's I Live With You

Jeffrey Ford

Gwenda Bond has high praise for Jeffrey Ford:  "Another writer who consistently hits it out of the park, but whose sheer range seems to have kept him from wider acclaim. He's a brilliant writer of both short stories and novels. His con man-ghost story-mystery, The Girl in the Glass, was one of the best novels I read in 2005. Ford's work is always pitch-perfect and authentic, whether he's writing something set in the present, the recent past or during the Great Depression. Not to mention entertaining as hell."

More about Jeffrey Ford
+  Jeffrey Ford's homepage
+  SFSite's conversation with Ford
+  SciFi Weekly interview and their Biography & bibliography of Ford
+  Ford's wikipedia entry

Maureen McHugh

This author shares the distinction of being doubly recommended with only one other author in this list. Visitors to either Gwenda Bond's and CAAF's sites know they have been effusive in their praise of McHugh. All the more so since McHugh's most recent publication--a short story collection titled Mothers and Other Monsters--was just recently shortlisted as a finalist for the Story Prize. Bond calls McHugh a "subtle, precise writer" whose "novels and short stories often borrow from Eastern or other multicultural settings and they always do it beautifully, focusing in on and illuminating heartbreakingly real characters." In her recommendation, CAAF calls the collection a "FREAKING KNOCKOUT." Twice. McHugh's Hugo- and Nebula-nominated novel China Mountain Zhang is also highly recommended.

More about Maureen McHugh
+  Her website and her blog
+  Her Wikipedia entry
+  Small Beer Press's page on Mothers
+  A conversation at Beatrice between McHugh and author Sarah Willis

Paul Park

This author comes recommended by Gwenda Bond. The first book in Park's most recent fantasy series, A Princess of Roumania, has gathered some high praise. "It's not what you're thinking though," Bond writes. "Park takes the conventions of high fantasy and darkens them, deepens them in a tale in which our world is a fiction created to conceal the princess of an alterate Romania; he masterfully draws his characters, dipping into and out of their points of view seamlessly." As if that's not enough, Bond informs us, "One of the main characters even becomes a dog! You can't beat that." Comparisons to Pullman's His Dark Materials series are regular occurrences in reviews of Park's latest effort.

More about Paul Park
+  An interview with Paul Park (a good read)
+  A science-fiction short titled "The Tourist"
+  Henry at Crooked Timber says Roumania is a "modern classic"
+  Review of one of Park's science-fiction novels, Celestis (scroll down)

Geoff Ryman

"Everyone should be reading him," says Gwenda Bond of Ryman. "He has profound things to say about the world in which we all find ourselves at the moment, and what may happen next. His most recent novel, Air (or Have Not Have), is not only one of the best pieces of speculative fiction I've ever read, but of literary fiction as well. Ryman's work has been consistently brave and mind-blowing and he deserves to be as well-known as Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, or Neal Stephenson." Air won the 2005 Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.

More about Geoff Ryman
+  Interview with Ryman at Infinity Plus One
+  Orion Publishing Group's bio and biblio page on Ryman
+  Bond's more extensive review of the novel