Welcome to the official site
of Australian
speculative fiction writer Sean
Williams.
Author of seventy published
short stories and twenty-nine novels, nominated for the Ditmar,
the Aurealis and the prestigious Philip K Dick Award for Saturn Returns,
Sean has been published around the world in numerous languages, on-line, and in
spoken word editions. His current
projects include Astropolis,
a gothic-noir gender-bending space opera trilogy, and The Broken Land, a
dark fantasy series for children set in the same fantasy universe as the Books of the Change
(now available in the US through E-Reads). Concluding volumes in each, The Grand Conjunction and The Scarecrow, are 2009 books. He has also written the novelisation of the
computer game Star
Wars: The Force Unleashed, which debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Magic
Dirt: the Best of Sean Williams was launched in 2008 and won the first
Aurealis Award for Best Collection (buy
it here).
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(at) seanwilliams.com snailmail
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earworm" favourite music
Sean's science fiction has
been likened to that of the "Three Gregs" (Benford, Bear and Egan) while his fantasy
has garnered comparisons to Peter
Carey, China Miéville
and Ursula K. Le Guin. His novel The
Crooked Letter was the first fantasy novel in the history of Australian
speculative fiction to win both Ditmar and Aurealis Awards, and is currently
available as a free
download. The fourth instalment of
the Books of the
Cataclysm, The Devoured Earth,
was released in Australia in September, 2006.
With collaborator Shane Dix,
he produced the Evergence,
Orphans and Geodesica series
and co-wrote the Star Wars: New
Jedi Order: Force
Heretic trilogy. Together, they have
been called "the
new Niven & Pournelle for the 21st century". A reading of "A Longing for the
Dark", a new short story set in the Geodesica universe, is currently
available for free download from Terra
Incognita.
Sean has written for the stage, and one of his
short stories was adapted
by the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild in 2009. Apart from reviews, music (for which he
won a Young Composer's Award in 1984), and the odd haiku (including "hairku" for 2007's
Movember), he occasionally makes
up new words. He also likes to
remix the work of other writers, most recently Kim Wilkins and Gary Numan.
You can find his blog here.
Sean lives with his wife and
family in Adelaide,
a city once described by Jules Verne as the prettiest in Australia and by
Salman Rushdie as "an ideal setting for a Stephen King novel". He completed a Masters
in Creative Writing at Adelaide University in 2005 and is currently a PhD
candidate at the same institution. He is
a founding board member of the award-winning Big Book Club Inc., on the
executive of the Australian Society of Authors, and on the board of
the SA Writers' Centre, of which he
has been chair twice in the last decade.
He has been a peer assessor for the Literature Board of the Australia Council and chair of the
literature advisory board of Arts
SA, and is currently on the SA
Youth Arts’ Board Project and Development Grant Advisory Committee. He judges or has judged for the Aurealis Awards, the Somerset National Novella
Competition and the Writers of
the Future contest. He has tutored
for Clarion South (2005 and 2009),
taught at various writers’ centres, schools and universities, and is an
honorary member of the International
Golden Key Society. He has been a
guest of all the literary festivals of Australian capital cities (some of them
more than once) and various National SF Conventions. His name appears on the Celebrity
Atheist List. He is occasionally
confused with fellow Australian speculative fiction author Sean McMullen, to hilarious
results.
He DJs and cooks curries less
frequently than he used to, but still likes mentioning them in his bio.
Sean Williams is a supporter of Australians Against Racism and Adelaide PEN. He is a member of SFWA, IAMTW and the Australian Society of Authors, and the SA Writers' Centre. His English language publishers include HarperCollinsAustralia, Del Rey, Ace, Pyr, Swift, Orbit, MirrorDanse, MonkeyBrain, Altair Australia, and Ticonderoga.
(This site is generously sponsored by Chariot Internet.)
© Sean Williams 2009
(Last updated 20.7.09)
(Author
photo: Writers of the Future 2009)